Law

Illegitimacy

An illegitimate child was the child of no one.

Of course, the child had a mother, and the mother was held responsible for its support until it was seven, but the illegitimate child was never an heir.

The parents of an illegitimate child had to name the child specifically in a will for the child to inherit from either of them. This was true whether or not the father acknowledged the child as his.

While most illegitimate children were born to unmarried mothers, a few were born into what were considered normal, valid marriages .

The child born to an unmarried mother knew from the beginning that he was illegitimate; those declared illegitimate later in life had to deal with the ramifications of such a label as adults after they had probably married or received legacies.

The famous actress, Dorothy Jordan, had numerous illegitimate children with several men, including ten illegitimate children with the Duke of Clarence.

The Hardwicke marriage act , paragraph 11 , says that marriages of minors, marrying by license , without permission of the father or guardian or a guardian appointed by the court of Chancery were absolutely invalid. The need for permission from a father was a problem for an illegitimate child who had a biological but no legal father. The courts subsequently interpreted this clause as saying that all minor illegitimate children had to have the permission of a guardian appointed by the Court of Chancery if they married by license as minors.

The dissolution of several marriages of fifteen to twenty-seven years duration, with the bastardization of the children and sometimes those of thegrandchildren , aroused strong protests.

If a couple’s marriage was declared void from the onset, then none of their children were legitimate. If any of their children had married by license when minors , even with the permission of the father, such a marriage was also invalid and all children illegitimate. Remember , the father of an illegitimate child had no authority to grant permission for a marriage by license.

Also, if a child had received a legacy from a relative based on a relationship to the person-- inherited because he was a nephew or because the oldest son of the marriage-- such legacy was invalid.

While an illegitimate child was no longer barred from being ordained or moving in society, the child faced difficulties a legitimate child did not. A person who discovers that he is illegitimate in adulthood and then discovers that his own marriage is probably invalid and his own children illegitimate can be overwhelmed with shock.

When Lady Harriet Cavendish, daughter of the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire, married Lord Granville, she took in the two illegitimate boys her husband had fathered with her aunt.

Efforts were made to change the law but met strong opposition from the faction which insisted on a father having the right to approve or disapprove of a child’s marriage. While commiseration was expressed by them for the adult children whose lives were disarranged, they felt that the numbers were not great enough to warrant a wholesale change to the law.

The Donegal case changed their minds and in 1822 the law was changed . All marriages of minors by license without proper permission, not already decided by a judge, were declared valid if the couple stayed together. Any couple who wished to end such a marriage could.

If the parents decided to separate, and did so within a specific time period, parliament declared their children legitimate. This was a one time offer and referred only to those who took advantage of the provisions of the act. The children involved in cases already decided or those whose marriages were declared invalid for other reasons or in the future were not covered by this amnesty.

A child born to a married woman was legitimate and considered the husband’s unless he took active steps to disown the child before it was born or at its birth. If he were away at the time of the conception he had to accuse his wife of adultery and divorce her.

The Duchess of Devonshire was sent away under a false name to have her child by Lord Grey. The child was immediately taken from her and given up to be raised by others.