Regency Trivia – When Was a Child Legitimate

When this question was asked I thought I’d addressed the subject previously, but apparently not. During the Regency, a child was a child of the marriage as long the child was born during the marriage, and the husband did not disclaim it. That is to say the child was the husband’s lawful and legitimate child—also known in the case of sons—as the heir of his body. It wasn’t until the late 1980’s that a man could dispute the legitimacy of a child born during the marriage, and it wasn’t until the 1990s that the biological father of the child could make a legal claim to be recognized as the child’s father when the mother was married to another man at the time of the child’s birth. All of this very helpfully came about as DNA started to be used in the courts to determine paternity. Although, DNA had been around since the 1960s, courts are notoriously slow to recognize new scientific methods.

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