Legitimacy (family law)

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Legitimacy, in traditional Western common law, is the status of a child born to parents who are legally married to each other, and of a child conceived before the parents obtain a legal divorce. Conversely, illegitimacy, also known as bastardy, has been the status of a child born outside marriage, such a child being known as a bastard, a love child, a natural child, or illegitimate. In Scots law, the terms natural son and natural daughter carry the same implications.

The importance of legitimacy has decreased substantially in Western developed countries since the sexual revolution of the 1960s and 1970s and the declining influence of Christian churches, especially Catholic, Anglican, and Lutherans, in family and social life.

A substantial proportion of births are now outside marriage, in multiple countries in Western Europe, the Americas, and in many former European colonies.^[1]