Definition
A person born outside of lawful marriage. At common law, a bastard was a child not born within wedlock and not born within a competent time after the dissolution of a valid marriage — meaning neither begotten nor born to parents who were lawfully married at the relevant time. The core legal test was whether the husband of the mother could, under the circumstances, be recognized as the child's father. A child conceived before marriage but born after the marriage of its parents was generally not considered a bastard; conversely, a child born after the ceremonial termination of a marriage but within a competent period could still be legitimate if paternity by the former husband remained legally possible.
The status carried substantial legal consequences at common law: a bastard was said to be "nullius filius" — the child of no one — and therefore had no inheritable blood, no claim to the father's estate through intestacy, and no legal kindred through either parent for purposes of succession. The child could not inherit from parents or collateral relatives as a matter of common law right, though statutory modifications began eroding these disabilities centuries ago and have largely eliminated them in modern law.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Primarily encountered today as a vulgar pejorative or as a general term of abuse; the genealogical sense survives in informal speech but carries no legal weight.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "A natural child; a child begotten and born out of wedlock; an illegitimate child; one born of an illicit union."
The gap between common and legal meaning is significant in historical sources. The term "natural child" — used interchangeably with "bastard" in Webster's 1913 and in much common speech — carries an opposing connotation in civil-law systems, where "natural child" denoted a specific recognized category of illegitimate child with limited inheritance rights, distinct from children of adulterous or incestuous unions. Researchers working across common-law and civil-law sources, or in Louisiana materials, must not treat "natural child" and "bastard" as true synonyms.
Common Confusion
BASTARD vs. ILLEGITIMATE CHILD: In modern legal usage these terms are functionally synonymous, and most contemporary statutes use "illegitimate child" or simply avoid status-based classifications altogether. In historical sources, however, "bastard" carried the full weight of the common-law disability regime — nullius filius, no inheritable blood — while "illegitimate" sometimes appeared in statutory contexts that softened or modified those disabilities. A statute using "illegitimate child" may have granted rights that a strict common-law bastard would not have enjoyed.
BASTARD vs. NATURAL CHILD: As noted above, "natural child" is not a safe synonym in civil-law jurisdictions or in Louisiana materials. In French-derived civil law, enfants naturels enjoyed a recognized but subordinate legal status and could receive a portion of the parent's estate; children of adulterous or incestuous unions (enfants adultérins or incestueux) were treated more harshly still. Louisiana sources reflect this layered taxonomy, and researchers must read terminology carefully.
Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES
Bastard eigne / Mulier puisne: A common-law distinction of historical importance. Where a man had a child by a woman he later married, the child born before the marriage (the bastard eigne, meaning "elder bastard") and a subsequent child born within the marriage (the mulier puisne, meaning "younger legitimate") could be in conflict over inheritance. English common law developed specific rules governing which child prevailed in a real property dispute — the mulier puisne's claim was generally superior, but the bastard eigne could obtain a possessory title under certain circumstances through long, uncontested seisin.
Bastard by subsequent legitimation: Many states and civil-law systems recognized that a subsequent marriage of the parents could legitimate a previously illegitimate child. The scope of this rule varied widely — some jurisdictions required the father's formal acknowledgment in addition to the marriage; others treated the marriage itself as automatically legitimating. Common law England did not recognize subsequent marriage as legitimating a bastard for purposes of English law, though ecclesiastical courts sometimes recognized the civil-law rule.
Why It Matters in Research
This term is a historical evolution term. The legal category of bastard was once consequential enough to generate its own dedicated body of law — bastardy proceedings, writs of bastardy, ecclesiastical court jurisdiction, and detailed statutory modification schemes. Researchers working in pre-twentieth-century materials will encounter this term constantly in property, probate, and family law contexts.
Several research traps apply:
First, the nullius filius rule was modified piecemeal by statute across different jurisdictions and across different time periods. A researcher cannot assume that "bastard" in an 1850 Ohio case carried the same bundle of disabilities as the same term in an 1850 Virginia case. Statutes allowing inheritance from the mother, statutes legitimating children by acknowledgment, and statutes allowing the bastard to inherit when no legitimate heirs survived all coexisted in overlapping and inconsistent ways.
Second, bastardy proceedings in historical sources were often quasi-criminal in nature — brought to compel a putative father to support the child and relieve the parish or county of that burden. The procedural posture of these cases is different from legitimacy disputes in probate or chancery. A researcher encountering a "bastardy" case in quarter sessions records is looking at public-welfare enforcement, not an inheritance adjudication.
Third, ecclesiastical court jurisdiction over questions of legitimacy was significant in England and its colonies. Determinations of legitimacy made in ecclesiastical courts could bind temporal courts on the status question, even though the property consequences were enforced elsewhere. Colonial American practice varied on how far this division of jurisdiction carried over.
Fourth, modern equal protection doctrine — particularly the line of U.S. Supreme Court cases beginning in the late 1960s and running through the 1970s and 1980s — dismantled most of the common-law disability regime at the federal constitutional level for state-law purposes. Statutes of limitations on paternity claims, inheritance bars, and Social Security eligibility rules based on illegitimacy status were progressively invalidated or constrained. Researchers working on constitutional history will find this arc of cases essential.
Fifth, the term itself is now largely absent from modern statutory drafting. Statutes use "child born out of wedlock," "nonmarital child," or simply treat parentage as a function of biological or legal determination without reference to the parents' marital status. The disappearance of the term from statutory text is itself a research signal about when a particular code was last comprehensively revised.
Historical Dictionary Support
The historical dictionaries converge on the core definition — a child born outside lawful marriage, with the husband's possible paternity as the operative legal test — but differ in emphasis and in what they address.
Black's (both editions) leads with the marital-status definition and adds the important refinement that a child born after marriage, under circumstances making the husband's paternity impossible, is also a bastard. This reflects the presumption of legitimacy and its rebuttal, which was one of the most litigated questions in this area.
Bouvier's addresses the legitimation-by-subsequent-marriage rule and notes that many states had adopted it by statute, following civil law. This is a useful reminder that the common-law rule — no legitimation by subsequent marriage — was not universal in American practice even in the nineteenth century.
Burrill's provides the most detail on etymology and frames the term's legal meaning historically, noting the requirement that the child be both begotten and born outside lawful matrimony — a formulation that tracks Blackstone and highlights the temporal dimension of the status question.
Anderson's supplies what is perhaps the most practically useful formulation for a researcher: "The test is whether the husband of the woman who gives birth to the child is its father." This cuts through the formal definitions to identify the operative legal question in most legitimacy disputes.
What the historical dictionaries collectively underemphasize is the procedural dimension — bastardy proceedings as a distinct vehicle — and the civil-law taxonomy distinguishing categories of illegitimate children by the nature of the relationship that produced them. Researchers in Louisiana, in civilian treatise literature, or in comparative law materials should supplement these sources accordingly.
Jurisdictional Note
Louisiana followed the civil-law taxonomy and distinguished between natural children, adulterine children, and incestuous children, with different legal consequences for each category — a structure that does not map onto common-law "bastard" doctrine. In England, legitimation by subsequent marriage was not recognized at common law but was recognized in the ecclesiastical courts under the canon law rule, producing a recurring conflict between the two systems that Parliament eventually resolved by statute. American states varied widely in their statutory modifications to the common-law disability rules, making jurisdiction-specific research essential for any pre-twentieth-century legitimacy or inheritance question.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia: Legitimacy and Illegitimacy; Bastardy Proceedings; Nullius Filius; Inheritance and Intestate Succession (Historical)