The Protection For The Inheritance Right Of Illegitimate Children In China

Along with the changes of times, people's concepts towards marriage, family and reproduction have also gradually altered at the same time. Conventional family ethics collide with new moral values continuously, unmarried cohabitation, the third party, extramarital affair and other social phenomena are increasingly emerging with an outcome of a quantity of children of illegitimate birth appearing hand in hand, and the contradictions and the conflicts caused by the above-mentioned evolve into new social problems step by step. To protect the traditional marriage system and for the need of inheriting the family property by the ones with family blood relationship, discrimination and ill-treating of the children of illegitimate birth is very common throughout the world from the ancient times to the Medieval Period. In recent years, progressive ideas of human rights and freedom have been developing gradually. People have come to know that the appearance of children of illegitimate birth is their parents' fault rather than theirs, and it is unfair to punish the kids due to the parents' mistake. In this regard, many countries begin to protect the rights of children of illegitimate birth in legislative thought, which enhances their legal status by a large margin. In China, Provision 25 of the Marriage Law points out that: “Children of illegitimate birth share the same right as children of legitimate birth, and no one shall discriminate or harm them.” From this point, the legislative thought of protecting the rights of the children of illegitimate birth is comparatively advanced in China. However, owing to the absence of the relevant systems such as paternity identification and inheriting notification systems, a lot of problems of the inheritance of children of illegitimate birth come into being in juridical practice, which makes enormous juridical resources squandered, and their right of inheritance harmed from time to time. Based on the analysis of the historical changes and the present legislative situation of the children of illegitimate birth in China, this paper selects some typical judicial cases to analyze. Taking the foreign correlative protections of rights and interests for reference and combined with the current Chinese practical situations, this paper brings out some suggestions for the protection of the right of inheritance of the children of illegitimate birth in China, hoping to do some good to the improvement of the relevant laws.