Succession of Vance

Citations

• 110 La. 760
• 34 So. 767
• 1903 La. LEXIS 705

Syllabus

<p>DONATION CAUSA MORTIS — NATURAL CHILDREN — BASTARDS—RIGHT TO INHERIT — ACKNOWLEDGMENT — EVIDENCE.</p> <p>1. The capacity to take under a donation mortis causa must be adjudged of at-the time of the opening of the succession of the testator, which means at the time of his death.</p> <p>2. The law denominates as “natural children” illegitimate children who have been acknowledged by their father; illegitimate children not acknowledged by their father, or whose parents were incapable of contracting marriage at the time of conception, are called bastards.</p> <p>3. So far as inheritance established by law is concerned, bastards are barred, the law allowing them nothing more than mere alimony. And they have no greater capacity to take under dispositions mortis causa.</p> <p>4. A mere reference by a man one time, in casual conversation, to a child as his is not that proof of acknowledgment which makes him or her what the law describes as a natural child.</p> <p>5. If calling a child his offspring be relied' on to establish legal acknowledgment (supposing it permissible for a father to acknowledge a child that way), the proof should be that the father was in the habit of so calling the child when speaking of it, or did so in habitual conversation with others.</p> <p>Nieholls, O. J., and Breaux, J., dissenting,</p> <p>(Syllabus by the Court.)</p>