§ 199. The Relation Between Parents and Children

Just as the bond into which a male person enters with a female may be lawful or unlawful, according to whether that bond can or cannot be recognized as having the character of marriage, so too the children who issue from that union of a man with a woman may be either legitimate (νόμιμοι, γνήσιοι, legitimi) or illegitimate (ἀνέγγυοι, illegitimi).

Legitimate are all children who are born of a lawful marriage, and who as such bear the name of their father and inherit all his rights. Besides these, legitimate are also considered those who issued from an unlawful marriage, provided that marriage was at least publicly contracted; and likewise those [children] are so considered even where the marriage in question was annulled on account of some matrimonial impediment. Proof of a child’s legitimacy is taken from the register of births, or from witnesses who can attest the existence of the marriage from which those children issued. If the parents acknowledge a child as their son or daughter, then no denial of this by anyone whomsoever is of any further effect; should someone wish to contest a child’s legitimacy, he is in that case obliged to produce proof for his assertion. The husband is held to be the father until the contrary is fully proven—namely, until it is proven that he could not have had carnal intercourse with the mother of the child at the time the child was conceived.[1]

Illegitimate children are called those born outside of marriage. In canon-legal sources a distinction is drawn among: natural [children] (φυσικοί, naturales), if born in concubinage and if it can be proven that the parents could have contracted marriage, whether at the time the child in question was conceived or at the time it was born; illegitimate in the narrower sense (νόθοι, spurii)—that is, those whose parents do not live in concubinage, but whose father is known; and finally, obscure [children] (σκότοι, tenebrosi), whose father is unknown.[2] Such children stand in no legal relation whatsoever toward the man who is their natural father, but bear the mother’s name, toward whom they already stand in the same legal relations as her legitimate children.[3] From the father, if he is known, they may claim at least so much as is necessary for their food and upbringing.[4]

In order to stem scandal and to avert a greater evil, both ecclesiastical and civil legislation permit the legitimation of illegitimate children.[5] Legitimation—that is, the declaring lawful of illegitimate children—occurs: a) ipso jure, namely, when the parents of children born before their marriage subsequently contract a lawful marriage. Children legitimated in this manner are placed on an equal footing with legitimate children, save that they do not have the right of primogeniture as against children born after the marriage was contracted, nor may they claim for themselves certain rights already acquired by legitimate children.[6] Accordingly, excluded from legitimation are children born of an unlawful union between a man and a woman, since that union of theirs can never have the character of marriage.[7] Legitimation may occur, further, b) by privilege of the sovereign, namely, when the death of the natural father occurs, or when, on account of some insurmountable impediment, the marriage cannot be contracted.[8]

Toward legitimate children, and likewise toward legitimated children, parents have the duties prescribed by law (§. 198). From these duties there arises for the parents the right to exercise authority over their children for as long as the children have not yet taken up an independent position in society—to correct them if they stray from the right path, to bring them back home if they run away, to administer their property, and to guide them in the choice of a station in life that seems most fitting to them, having regard to the children’s natural inclination. This is guaranteed to parents by natural law, and likewise by positive ecclesiastical and civil law.[9] In connection with this, by that same law, children are obliged to honor and obey their parents, and, in time of need, to help support them.[10] Canon 16 of the Council of Gangra subjects to anathema children who withdraw from their parents, when the parents are pious, and who do not render to their parents the honor due them.

V. THE DISSOLUTION OF MARRIAGE.