Inheritance by Non-Marital Children

Browne Lewis (Visiting Professor, University of Pittsburgh School of Law) has recently published her article entitled Children of Men: Balancing the Inheritance Rights of Marital and Non-Marital Children, 39 U. Tol. L. Rev. 1 (2007).

Here the conclusion to her article:

In the current climate in the United States, marriage is not a requirement for procreation. A woman has various reproductive options. She can have a child from a non-marital sexual relationship or through the use of artificial insemination. Thus, the number of children being born out of wedlock has increased. Historically, non-marital children were not permitted to inherit from their fathers. The U.S. Supreme Court and various state legislatures have taken actions to expand the inheritance rights of non-marital children. Unfortunately, those procedures are complicated and require non-marital children to depend upon the affirmative actions of their parents. The UPA introduces a system that allows non-marital children to inherit from their fathers on mostly equal terms with marital children, but further improvements are needed to fairly treat non-marital children for inheritance purposes. My proposed system gives the probate court flexibility to balance the interests of the state, non-marital children, and marital children. This system addresses the proper inclusion of non-marital children in intestacy statutes, but would need to be uniformly adopted by the states to accommodate family mobility and promote fairness among the states.