Legitim

Legitim, or BAI RN'S PART, in the Scotch law, is the legal provision which a child is entitled to out of the movable or personal estate of the deceased father. The extent of the provision varies according as the wife of the father of the child survives or not. If a wife survive, and also children survive, the movable estate is divided into three equal parts. One is the widow's Jus Relictæ (see HUSBAND AND WIFE), another is the children's legitim, the other third is the Dead's Part (q.v.), which the father may bequeath by will if he pleases; but if he make no will, then it goes to the children as next of kin. If the wife is dead, then half is legitim, and the other half is dead's part. Moreover, a father, though in his lifetime he may, without any check from his children, squander his property, still is not allowed on his death-bed to make gifts so as to lessen the fund which will supply legitim. The children's claim to legitim may be qualified by an antenuptial contract of marriage, which provides some other provision to the children in lieu of legitim; but, as a general rule, the children's claim cannot be defeated by anything the father can do by means of a will or what is equivalent to a will. The legitim is claimable by all the children who survive the father, but not by the issue of those children who have predeceased. It is immaterial what the age of the child may be, and whether married or not. Children claiming legitim must, however, give credit for any provision or advance made by the father out of his movable estate in his lifetime. All the children, though of different marriages, share in the legitim. In England and Ireland there is no similar right to legitim, for the father can bequeath all his property to strangers if he please; but a similar custom, now abolished, once existed in the city of London and York. By the Married Women's Property Act, 1881, the children of any woman who dies domiciled in Scotland has the same right of legitim in regard to her movable estate as they have in the movable estate of their father.