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Sun 25 Dec, 2005 07:08 am
My daughter is writing a dissertation on inheritance in the early 19th century around the regency period. She wishes to know if a man recognizes his illegitimate child in his will and leaves everything to her/him as he as no legal child would this be classed as legal or can the rest of his family claim it off the child.
Thanks
Lynne
"Addressing the Duke and Inheriting his Loot" is the only reference to that subject I know online.
[I'm sure, someone doing predoctoral researches about that subject is already aware of those sources, though.]
Besides that, I just know that Church law recognised that illegitimacy was removed by any subsequent marriage of the parents - however English civil law didn't.
And I'm not sure at all, if this relatively short period of about ten years was a marks- or a turning point in English law re inheritage.
In aristocratic and gentry families, the family estate was generally "entailed", i.e. tied up legally so that it could only be passed to the next legitimate heir by blood. Nobody could pass such property to an illegitimate child. The same is true of peerage titles.
However, a man could write a will leaving any personally-owned property to anyone he liked - his illegitimate child, his housekeeper, his mistress, a charity, whatever.
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