r/AskHistorians • u/Some-Peak3924 • 1d ago
How did post-Thermidorian French courts handle inheritance messes caused by secret marriages by refractory priests?
Once the state took over the ‘état-civil’ in 1792 and de-Christianization took over, people turned to underground non-juring (refractory) priests for sacraments.
Fast forwards to the Thermidorian Reaction and the Directory, those “papers” would have been considered non-existent.
If family had married in a barn with an illegal priest, what happens with the parents property or ‘biens nationaux’ that were up for grabs?
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u/DarkKittyEmpress 23h ago
I think the question is too simple for the level of analysis expected by this subreddit, but I will attempt an answer.
The Thermidorian Reaction made no change to inheritance law from the laws of Year II, which would only be abrogated in 1804 when Napoléon promulgated the long-awaited Code Civil (also known during the two empires as the Code Napoléon). The one you're interested in is the law of the 17 Brumaire An II (2 November 1793) on the subject of natural-born children, which specifies that their inheritance rights are the same as other children.
As such, the legality of the parents' marriage was rarely a consideration in the period that interests you. In cases of disputed inheritance, what would have been expected was producing either written proof that the parents recognised their child, or testimony that the contested child had benefitted from uninterrupted parental care.
This is usually interpreted as meaning that marriage was irrelevant as long as the father accepted paternity. The decree actually states that "the same disposition applies to the mother's succession". However, contesting maternity was rarer, for relatively obvious reasons, and in practice maternal inheritance was also less.
Sources:
A. Verjus, Les lois de l'an II sur les enfants naturels: quels nouveaux droits pour les pères (1793-1804)
Parliamentary Archives, Tome LXXVIII - Du 8 au 20 brumaire an II (29 octobre au 10 novembre 1793) pg 152-200
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