Unmarriage

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illegitimate, non-marital or extramarital nature legally refers to the birth situation of a child outside an existing marriage, i.e. when the biological mother and the biological father are not married to each other; It was formerly called illegitimacy and was considered a mark of honor. A child not born of a valid marriage is or has been described as illegitimate or illegitimate if the marriage was not subsequently legitimized. Marriage, on the other hand, means the birth of a child within a marriage or its declaration of maritality.

Frequency
On average in the European Union, the proportion of children born out of wedlock was 42% in 2015. In East Germany, the share stood at almost 60% in 2014, in West Germany at almost 30%. If the 28 EU countries are considered together with the countries Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland, then in 1960 the leader was Iceland with 25%, followed by Austria with 13% and Sweden with 11% illegitimate born. In Iceland, illegitimate marriage was already more common than maritality in 1990; Sweden, Estonia, Norway followed in 2000, Slovenia, Bulgaria, France in 2010 and Denmark, Portugal, Netherlands in 2015. In 2015, non-marriage is comparatively rare in Greece, Cyprus, Croatia and Liechtenstein with less than 20% each, the other countries mentioned are far higher.

Out of 497 European regions, the French département Aube was at the top of non-marital births in 2012: almost three quarters of babies (72.4%) had unmarried parents.

Applicable law

Germany
The terms “illegitimate child” and “marital child” come only in Abs. 5 of the Basic Law (GG).

In all other federal laws, the legislature had by the non-marital law to 1. July 1970 changed the wording to non-marital children. Since then, the non-marital child was under the parental care of the mother, before the Jugendamt had always been official guardian. In the GDR, similar regulations had already been made in 1950.

In German law, a child is considered to be extramarital born to an unmarried mother or a woman whose marriage has been dissolved by the death of the spouse for more than 300 days or by a final divorce decision on the day of birth (legal situation since 1 July 1998). A child is also extramarital if his paternity has been successfully challenged in court with the help of a paternity opinion. The same applies if the child was born after the divorce action and the biological father has certified paternity with the consent of the mother and her husband (§ 1599 para 2 BGB).

The subtitle (BGB) on the maintenance obligation in the Civil Code has been since 1. July 1998, the heading ‘Special provisions for the child and its parents not married to each other’. Maintenance differences were covered by this Refor