Legal Definitions - pro parte legitimus, pro parte illegitimus

The Latin phrase pro parte legitimus, pro parte illegitimus translates to "partly legitimate, partly illegitimate." Historically, this term described a child whose legal status regarding legitimacy varied depending on the specific legal system or jurisdiction. In some legal traditions, particularly those influenced by Roman or civil law, a child born outside of marriage could become fully legitimate if their parents subsequently married. However, other legal systems, such as historical English common law, did not always grant full legitimate status to such children, even after the parents' marriage. This created situations where a child might be considered legitimate for certain purposes or in one country, but illegitimate for other purposes or in another country.

• Cross-Jurisdictional Inheritance: Imagine a couple who had a child in France (a civil law country) while unmarried. A few years later, they married. Under French law, the child would be considered fully legitimate from the date of the parents' marriage. However, if the father also owned a significant estate in historical England (which followed common law principles), the child might not have been recognized as a legitimate heir to the English property.

  This illustrates pro parte legitimus, pro parte illegitimus because the child was "partly legitimate" (fully recognized as legitimate in France for all purposes) but "partly illegitimate" (not recognized as a legitimate heir for the English estate under its specific laws).

• Specific Rights vs. General Status: Consider a scenario in 19th-century Europe where a child was born to unmarried parents in a region that adopted civil law principles. The parents later married, and the child was generally accepted by society and the law as legitimate. However, the child's paternal grandfather had established a trust fund specifically for "legitimate issue born of a marriage existing at the time of birth."

  Here, the child would be "partly legitimate" (legitimate for most legal purposes, such as inheriting general property or receiving parental support) but "partly illegitimate" (unable to inherit from the specific trust fund due to the strict wording of the trust and the historical legal interpretation of legitimacy at birth versus legitimation by subsequent marriage).