Definition
In Roman and civil law, *naturales* (singular: *naturalis*) denotes persons or relationships defined by nature rather than by positive law or legal fiction. The term appears most often in two overlapping contexts:
1. *Naturales liberi* — children born of natural parentage, whether or not their parents were joined in lawful Roman marriage. This category encompassed both legitimate offspring and children born outside formal legal unions, with the latter sometimes distinguished further as *spurii* depending on the circumstances of birth.
2. *Naturales heredes* — natural heirs, meaning those who succeed to property by virtue of blood relationship rather than by testamentary appointment or legal designation alone. In this sense, *naturales* functions as a modifier emphasizing biological or familial connection as the basis of a legal claim.
In English common law reception of civil law concepts, the term fed into the vocabulary of natural guardianship and natural heirship, where "natural" distinguished relationships grounded in blood from those created by law, contract, or judicial appointment.
Common Confusion
*Naturales* is easily conflated with two distinct categories it does not perfectly map onto. First, it is not synonymous with *legitimi*: legitimate children had full civil law status and succession rights, while *naturales* in the narrower Roman sense could include children whose succession rights were qualified or limited. Second, in common law usage, "natural heir" migrated toward a meaning closer to *nearest blood relative* and was eventually absorbed into statutory heirship frameworks — a shift that can obscure the original civil law precision of the term when reading historical English sources. Researchers encountering "natural heirs" in nineteenth-century American wills and statutes should not assume the Roman civil law meaning applies directly.
Why It Matters in Research
The term surfaces in American legal sources primarily as a residue of civil law learning carried into treatise writing and judicial opinions dealing with guardianship and inheritance. Rapalje & Lawrence's entry under *Natural Guardian* and *Natural Heirs* reflects this: the citations are to nineteenth-century American cases grappling with what "natural" means when applied to parental authority and testamentary language, not to Roman texts directly.
Several navigational traps exist for corpus researchers:
First, *naturales* as a standalone Latin term is rare in Anglo-American primary sources. Researchers are more likely to encounter it embedded in Latin maxims or civil law quotations within treatises than as a standalone operative term in cases or statutes.
Second, the phrase "natural heirs" in a will is a recurring interpretive problem in American probate cases. Courts divided over whether the phrase meant *heirs at law* (those who would take under intestacy statutes), *blood relatives generally*, or something else entirely. The Connecticut and North Carolina cases cited by Rapalje & Lawrence reflect this live dispute. Searching for "natural heirs" in the corpus without attending to this interpretive instability will produce misleading results.
Third, "natural guardian" underwent parallel evolution. At common law, the father was the natural guardian of legitimate children; the mother's guardianship rights were qualified and jurisdiction-dependent. By the mid-nineteenth century, American statutes began equalizing parental rights, and cases cited under Rapalje & Lawrence's entry (Kent's Commentaries, Wheeler's American Common Law, and the Connecticut and New York reporters) chart this transition. The Latin *naturales* in a source from this period may signal which legal tradition — Roman civil law or English common law — the author is drawing on, which affects how guardianship rights are framed.
Fourth, researchers working in Louisiana, Quebec-influenced jurisdictions, or early Spanish and French colonial records will encounter *naturales* with closer fidelity to its civil law meaning, as those jurisdictions did not fully assimilate the common law framework.
Historical Dictionary Support
Rapalje & Lawrence do not define *naturales* as a standalone entry but address its conceptual content through *Natural Guardian* and *Natural Heirs*. This is itself informative: by the late nineteenth century, the Latin term had largely dissolved into English-language legal vocabulary, and American legal dictionaries treated the underlying concepts without needing to engage the Roman source term.
The sources Rapalje & Lawrence cite — Kent's Commentaries volumes 2, Wheeler's American Common Law, and a cluster of Connecticut, New York, and North Carolina reporters — suggest that by the 1880s, *naturales* concepts were entirely domesticated into common law categories. Kent's Commentaries is the most important bridge text here: Kent drew heavily on civil law learning but translated it into common law idiom, and his treatment of parental rights and natural guardianship shaped American doctrine for generations.
What the historical dictionaries miss is the civil law substrate. Neither Rapalje & Lawrence nor the cases they cite engage the original Roman distinction between *naturales* and *legitimi* with any precision. Researchers needing that level of analysis should consult Justinian's Institutes and the Digest directly, or secondary treatments in Sandars's Institutes or Hunter's Roman Law.
Jurisdictional Note
Louisiana stands apart: its civil law tradition preserved more of the original Roman vocabulary and conceptual structure around *naturales*, particularly regarding illegitimate children's succession rights, well into the twentieth century. In common law states, the term's practical content was fully absorbed into statutory heirship and guardianship frameworks by the mid-nineteenth century.