LEGITIMATE AND ILLEGITIMATE

A legitimate child is one regarded by law as a child born with full rights and it confers on the child certain rights against the man whom the law regards as his father and generally against the society.

Children born out of wedlock are referred to as illegitimate child.

For a child to be seen as a legitimate child there must exist a valid marriage between the parents of the child ,statutory marriage ,customary, Islamic or church marriage, where non is present then the child is an illegitimate child.

      Section 42(2) of the 199 constitution FRN provide thus;

  No citizen of Nigeria shall be subject to any disabilities or deprivation merely by reason or        circumstances of his birth.

From the foregoing a child born out of wedlock can as well become a legitimate child through subsequent marriage of his parent or by acknowledgment by his father after the date of his birth. It is also a way of making legitimate which was not originally so through statutory procedure.

It is important to determine the status of an illegitimate child to assure the succession right as against a legitimate child.

Legitimacy is of great importance in that only legitimate children can inherit their father’s estate and also enjoy the status incidental to legitimate children which includes the right to maintenance, custody amongst other rights.

This is an important topic and an aspect of law owing to the growing number of illegitimate birth popularly known as ‘baby mama’ that has been on the increase in recent times where more than one third of the birth in Nigeria are mostly of unmarried mothers.

Other instances of legitimacy

There are other instances of a child being regarded as legitimate child of a man who is not the natural father for instance a widow who remain in the house of her late husband’s family after the death of her husband without the marriage to the late husband dissolved, any child she bears post- humously is regarded as the legitimate child of her late husband at birth. This point has been buttress in the Nigerian case of Nwaribe V President oru district court & ors, this was judicially approved as not being repugnant to natural justice, equity and good conscience.

It is of great importance that every child should be born during the subsistence of a valid marriage which is either statutory, customary, Islamic or church marriage.

Oyenike Alliyu-Adebiyi LLB(hons)BL