Affiliation

Affiliation, or FILIATION, is the name given to an action brought in the Sheriff Courts in Scotland, by the mother of a bastard, to recover aliment from the putative father. It is the equivalent of the proceeding for a Bastardy Order before the Justices in England; and under the Summary Jurisdiction Process Act, 1881, the inferior courts of both countries have been freed from many difficulties as to jurisdiction in this matter. The rates of aliment allowed against the father vary in different districts in Scotland; in Glasgow it is £8 per annum until the age of 7 or 10, or some other fixed age, when the mother's right of custody expires, and the father may make his arrangements for the child's maintenance. A debt of this nature may still be enforced by imprisonment. There are risks of fraud and extortion in any system of affiliation, and occasionally difficult questions of medical jurisprudence have occurred with reference to the transmission of personal features—e.g. colour of skin or hair, or of personal diseases and deformities. On the whole, however, affiliation is more wholesome than the French system of refusing to inquire into paternity.