Legal status of an illegitimate child: regulations at the beginning of the 20th century

Abstract

Throughout history, it was of great importance that a child should be legitimate, that is, from a legal relationship between a man and a woman. Hungarian private law imposed sanctions on the illegitimate child without any influence on his or her own origin. He began his life with a significant handicap because he could not have a relationship with his biological father, he could not use his father’s family name, he could not have a family relationship with his father and his father’s family, and he could not be his father’s heir. In addition, all the obligations imposed on the biological father, such as maintenance, also adversely affected both the child and his mother. At the end of the 19th century, the process of drafting the first Hungarian private law code began, which would have reassuringly settled the fate of the illegitimate child. First, by abandoning the adjective ‘illegitimate’ and replacing it with the term ‘non-marital’. The biological
father obtained more rights with the adoption of the bill, he had a greater say in the fate of his child, and the child could inherit, if last but not least, his father’s property. The final solution was enforced by political and social changes after World War II, which happened with the creation of Act XXIX of 1946. The law completely abolished the examination of the issue of origin, that is, the child had equal rights, whether born in or out of marriage. In order to legitimize the child, there was a subsequent marriage. In my work, I present the process through which Hungarian jurisprudence came from the legal position taken for centuries, to the legislation created as an achievement of modern legal thinking, which abolished the discriminatory regulation between a marital and a non-marital child.