Vickipedia

LEGITIMA’TION, in Scotch (and Foreign) Law, is the rendering legitimate a person who was born illegitimate. This is done by the father subsequently marrying the mother of the child, and hence it is often called legitimation per subseqvens matrimonium. This effect, however, can only be produced provided at the time of the birth the parents might have been married, or there was no obstacle to their then marrying, if so inclined, as, for example, if they were both unmarried, and there was no impediment. Sometimes it has happened that the father, A, or mother, B, after the child’s birth, marries a third person, and has children, and after the dissolution of the marriage, A and B then marry. In this perplexing case, the courts have held that the intervening marriage with a third party does not prevent the bastard child, born before that event, from being legitimated by the subsequent marriage of A and B. But it has not been settled what are the mutual rights of the children of the two marriages in such circumstances, though it appears that the legitimate-born children cannot be displaced by the legitimated bastard. The doctrine of legitimation per subsequens matrimonium is not recognized in England or Ireland, having been solemnly repudiated by the famous statute of Merton, and the maxim prevails there, ‘once a bastard, always a bastard.’ Legitimation is also recognized in Scotland, but not in England or Ireland, where the parents were not really married, though they both bona-fide believed themselves to be married. This is called a putative marriage. The Scotch law on these subjects follows the canon law, and the French law is the same.