Definition
The legitime (also spelled legitim in Scots law) is the portion of a deceased parent's estate that the law reserves for the children and that cannot be taken away by will or inter vivos gift without legally recognized cause. It is a forced share — a floor below which testamentary freedom cannot reach — imposed by law to protect children from disinheritance.
The concept originates in Roman civil law and survives in various forms wherever civil law tradition persists. The protected portion is calculated as a fraction of the estate, with the fraction scaling to the number of surviving children. Bouvier's formulation based on Louisiana's civil code is illustrative: no more than two-thirds of the estate may be given away if one legitimate child survives; no more than one-half if two children survive; no more than two-thirds if three or more children survive — meaning the forced share grows as the number of children increases.
Common Confusion
Two distinct usages appear across the historical sources and should not be merged. First, legitime in the substantive sense described above: a protected share of a decedent's estate owed to children. Second, legitime as a Latin adverb meaning "lawfully" or "with the authority of law," appearing in the maxim Legitime imperanti parere necesse est ("One who commands lawfully must be obeyed"). Burrill's entry focuses almost entirely on this adverbial usage. Researchers encountering the adverbial form in older texts should not read it as a reference to forced heirship; the context of the surrounding passage will distinguish them.
The term also invites confusion with the related concept of the portio legitima in classical Roman law and with the Scottish legitim (or bairns' part), which is a parallel institution applied to moveable property under Scots law. These share the same conceptual root but differ in scope, calculation, and the class of property subject to the claim.
Why It Matters in Research
Legitime is not a common law concept. Researchers working in common law jurisdictions will find almost no domestic doctrine on point — the term appears in American legal sources almost exclusively through Louisiana, which inherited it from its French and Spanish civil law predecessors. Louisiana remains the primary American jurisdiction where legitime has live doctrinal force, and Louisiana case law (including the decisions cited in Black's 2nd edition, Miller v. Miller and Cox v. Von Ahlefeldt) is the relevant corpus for American research on this term.
Researchers approaching 19th-century legal dictionaries should note that the entries for legitime are often brief and not fully distinguished from the adverbial Latin form. Bouvier's is the exception: his entry provides the most substantive treatment of the Louisiana statutory fractions and is the most useful historical source for understanding how the doctrine operated in practice under American law.
For comparative and historical research, the term connects to broader civil law material on succession, forced heirship, and the falcidian and trebellian portions of Roman law — all of which shaped the European civil codes that in turn influenced Louisiana. Researchers working on the French Code Civil or the Louisiana Civil Code of 1808 and its successors will find legitime treated as a live legislative category.
The scaling fraction structure (the share changes with the number of children) is a consistent feature across civil law systems and is a useful diagnostic when reading foreign or historical succession documents: if you see a share that adjusts by headcount of children, you are almost certainly looking at a forced heirship regime descended from the same Roman root.
Historical Dictionary Support
The historical dictionaries are largely in agreement on the substantive definition: all sources that address the term as a noun define it as the portion of a parent's estate that cannot be alienated away from the children without legal cause. Black's 1st and 2nd editions, Rapalje & Lawrence, and Bouvier all align on this core. The primary divergence is in depth: Bouvier provides the most useful treatment by supplying the Louisiana Civil Code fractions, while Black's 2nd edition adds case citations that anchor the definition in American jurisprudence. Burrill is the outlier — his entry treats legitime almost entirely as an adverb and does not engage with the forced heirship doctrine at all, which reflects a different editorial emphasis rather than a substantive disagreement.
None of the historical dictionaries fully develops the connection to Scots law legitim, and none addresses the distinction between moveable and immoveable property that matters in comparative analysis. Researchers should treat the historical entries as entry points requiring supplementation from civil law treatises for any substantive work.
Jurisdictional Note
In the United States, legitime has practical legal force almost exclusively in Louisiana. Louisiana's forced heirship rules have been modified by constitutional amendment and statute over time — the 1989 amendment and subsequent revisions significantly narrowed the class of forced heirs to children under 24 and children with permanent disabilities — so historical sources describing the Louisiana doctrine may not reflect current law. Researchers should verify the applicable Louisiana Civil Code articles for the period under study.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia: Forced Heirship; Succession (Civil Law); Louisiana Civil Law Tradition.