Which countries divide children as legitimate and illegitimate? Back in the 1990s in Chile, the law separating legitimate and illegitimate children was abolished and all children started to have the same rights. I'm not sure, but I think the term &quot;illegimitate&quot; was remove from the law altogether. Of course, this wreaked havoc at first since many &quot;hidden children&quot; had rights to be visited and were allowed access to a range of rights overnight. Most official wives knew about the existence of those &quot;children on the side&quot; but preferred to ignore and shun them, and to keep them away from any rights. Well... it took a few months (maybe more), but finally all was normalized and accepted. Now, I was surprised to learn that in many countries this difference still exists. Of course, this is only my ignorance speaking. I should have known better. How can I find out in which countries does this difference still exist? Is there any map that clearly shows which ones implement it (and to what degree) and which ones do not?
You can look here for various sources on the legal status of children born &quot;out of wedlock&quot;, however most of that discussion is focused on European legal systems. This page states what the situation is under Islamic law (the majority view seems to be that the child is &quot;the child of no-one&quot;). This article specifically compares illegitimate children in Iran vs. England, indicating that Iran follows the majority interpretation. Indian law is complicated because of the various sub-varieties of family law – Muslims follow Muslim family law, Hindus follow Hindu family law, and so on. Here is a brief summary of Indian law. One point to be taken from this is that there is a difference between the status of a child whose parents are in a void or voidable marriage, vs. no marriage at all. Kenya likewise has more than one kind of family law, plus a constitutional change. So see this case which relies on an older tradition that if a man and woman have a child but don't get married, the child is not legally the child of the man, but also see the Constitution of 2010 Art 27(4) The State shall not discriminate directly or indirectly against any person on any ground, including race, sex, pregnancy, marital status, health status, ethnic or social origin, colour, age, disability, religion, conscience, belief, culture, dress, language or birth. and especially Art 53 (1e) where every child has the right to parental care and protection, which includes equal responsibility of the mother and father to provide for the child, whether they are married to each other or not.
Yes The only accurate thing in the linked article is: &quot;I am not a Constitutional lawyer.&quot; That could be taken further into &quot;I have no real idea how our legal and political systems work.&quot; One of the tasks of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court is to interpret the laws of Massachusetts including the Massachusetts Constitution. In Goodridge v. Department of Public Health the court decided that the Constitution provided for equal protection and due process and that if the state wished to discriminate against people on the basis of sex they needed a good reason. The reasons the state put forward were: providing a 'favorable setting for procreation'; ensuring the optimal setting for child rearing, which the department defines as 'a two-parent family with one parent of each sex'; and preserving scarce State and private financial resources. On 1. the court said marriage is irrelevant for procreation and vice-versa. On 2. they said Massachusetts law on child welfare dealt with the &quot;best interests of the child&quot; and that it is not in those interests for the state to deprive the child of benefits because it doesn't like the sexual orientation of the parents. On 3. they said equal protection means equal protection. In a common law legal system like Massachusetts where courts have the power to strike down legislation then that takes effect as soon as the decision is published. The law ceases to exist without the legislature or the executive doing anything. Now, the people of Massachusetts are free to amend their constitution to outlaw same-sex marriage or remove equal protection rights if they want. However, at the time and subsequently, the majority don't want.
You don't need to "report" it to anyone in the US or do anything else. The US doesn't have any national registry of marriage. Any marriage or divorce conducted anywhere in the world is automatically recognized anywhere in the US (with some exceptions like polygamous marriages); the same is true in many other countries. How does the U.S. find out, for tax or insurance purposes? Obviously there's a little box that says [] Married but how would they know if I lied if I'm not registered in the United States? They don't, and don't need to. (The same is true for marriages in the US -- they don't directly "know".) You are required to use an appropriate filing status for your marriage status at the end of the year for each year's tax returns. If you don't, you are committing fraud. There are lots of things that you can intentionally lie about on tax returns, and they may not immediately "find out"; but when they do, you are in big trouble. Am I legally required to report it when I return? No. Would the Canadian/provincial government inform the U.S./state government? No.
No law in the US requires that parent and child have the same last name. It is usual that a child's name match that of at least one parent, but not required. A parent can change his or her name, without changing the names of any existing children. Also, when a child is adopted, the child's name need not be changed to match the name of the parents, or either of them. I have read of cases where a widow remarries, and takes the name of her new husband, but an adolescent child retains his or her birth surname. I suppose this would also be possible legally if it is the husband who changes name on remarriage, but i have not read of such a case. I think, but I am not sure, that a child's name could be changed to a different name than the name of either parent. It may be that this would only be done if the child is old enough to understand and agree to the change.
Chief Justice Roberts, dissenting, says (at p. 24): The equal protection analysis might be different, in my view, if we were confronted with a more focused challenge to the denial of certain tangible benefits. That indicates to me that there is probably a majority on the court that thinks same-sex couples should have the same adoption rights and other tangible benefits as opposite-sex couples, but that would have to be tested in court. Regarding level-of-scrutiny, this opinion says nothing on the issue. But, given that Justice Kennedy follows a fundamental rights analysis, it could be argued that it is likely strict scrutiny, or at least a level of scrutiny higher than rational basis. Vacco v. Quill, 521 U.S. 793 (1997), citing Romer v. Evans, 517 U. S. 620, 631 (1996) (emphasis added, internal punctuation removed): If a legislative classification or distinction neither burdens a fundamental right nor targets a suspect class, we will uphold it so long as it bears a rational relation to some legitimate end.
The comments have basically covered this, but: It's a slightly weird parallel structure ("who shall not be at least 25, and been a citizen for 7 years, and who shall not be a resident"). The Constitution is not written in fluid 21st-century English. But the obviously correct way to parse the sentence is that no one can be a representative who isn't a 25-year-old or older who's been a citizen for at least 7 years; furthermore, no one can be a representative who wasn't a resident of the state they represent when they were elected. With some parts of the Constitution (like the Second Amendment), the drafting results in actual disputes about the intended meaning. With other parts (like here), only one reading makes any sense. It's the same with the requirements to be President. The Constitution says "No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President," which could be read as "you're not eligible unless, when the Constitution was adopted, you were either a citizen of the US or a natural-born citizen." But that's a silly reading, so "at the time of the Adoption" is read as only applying to "a Citizen of the United States:" natural-born citizens are eligible period, and people who were born before the US was a thing but were citizens by the time the Constitution was adopted were grandfathered in.
Being misunderstood is not a crime. You could concoct scenarios where any number of statements could be a crime if interpreted unfairly. "I went to Georgia last weekend." "I choose to believe you mean the country instead of the state, and you don't have a passport, therefore you admitted that you went to a foreign country illegally!" The police would be free to investigate, but they wouldn't be able to get a warrant or arrest him based just on an ambiguous statement, let alone obtain a conviction. Of course, if the younger sister decided to accuse him, and the older sister decided to lie about having a relationship with him, that puts the statement in a whole other context - but if someone is falsely accusing you and someone else corroborates their story, you're probably in trouble no matter how exactly that came about.
No To declare that a parent is &quot;unfit&quot; in the US requires at least a decision by a government agency (often called &quot;child protective services&quot; or &quot;child welfare&quot; depending on the state) usually confirmed by a judge. Medical testimony may be persuasive, but neither doctors nor hospitals may make such determinations.