Pearl - How Illegitimate Children Changed Inheritance Forever w⧸ @thisisshah

In this episode, we talk about the early history of the Catholic Church and what it means to be an illegitimate child and how it affected the way of life in pre-Christianity. We also talk about what it was like to be a child out of wedlock and what would happen to them if they were illegitimate.

00:00:00.000 Well, it's interesting too, because with so many single mothers coming up, like the chance of 0.99

00:00:04.880 this dowry happening is like negative a thousand. No, you know, if it did happen, at least in the

00:00:10.100 more recent history, that would be an illegitimate child. Yeah, what would happen to them? So back

00:00:15.860 then it was, it was really different. Like nowadays we do this thing where we take a child

00:00:21.060 who's illegitimate and we make them legitimate, which means they have rights of inheritance and

00:00:25.120 all this stuff in probate court back then an illegitimate child you're not going to legally

00:00:30.060 inherit no no way yeah so you have this illegitimate child uh it doesn't count and the

00:00:35.600 you know the church was strict on this too there was no genetic tests back then either but

00:00:39.780 let me tell you something adoption wasn't even legal until relatively recently no way the church

00:00:45.240 outlawed adoption and it for from ancient rome from whenever christianity became the sort of

00:00:51.740 state religion all the way up and through through like 1850 or so adoption was was illegal they were

00:00:58.040 very specific about you know what marriages can happen so what would happen to the kids whose 1.00

00:01:03.020 parents died uh well they probably end up in some kind of orphanage or you know um but so it's it's

00:01:11.460 interesting when you look at it because what happens is is you know back then like let's say

00:01:14.960 you married someone and she was barren or she couldn't have kids you couldn't really know that 1.00

00:01:18.980 before before you know they would maybe marry a concubine who's not a wife but she can provide a 1.00

00:01:25.540 child and he can be made he or she could be made legitimate the church outlawed concubinage when

00:01:31.040 they became monogamous so it almost helped the infertile woman because yeah like in a way because 1.00

00:01:38.080 she still gets to stay married instead of getting divorced if you look up what organization on the

00:01:43.960 planet owns the most property. Guess what do you think it is? I'm thinking Bill Gates. It's the

00:01:51.700 Catholic Church. Oh no. Oh, that's... I should have been able to guess. The Catholic Church owns the 0.97

00:01:56.360 most property because what would happen is you'd end up with people who didn't have heirs to pass

00:02:01.440 it on to and they would gift it to the church. So when they outlawed adoption, so you couldn't

00:02:05.740 adopt somebody to get to pass it on, you couldn't have a concubine, about 20% of people wouldn't

00:02:13.020 have kids in Europe, and another 20% would only have daughters. So that particular daughter, if

00:02:19.300 she didn't get married, she would have a really nice dowry because she's inheriting everything. 1.00

00:02:24.740 It's not just her portion. But anyway, so it's an interesting history. And, you know, so you can

00:02:31.860 kind of see how that forms Europe and what's different about it. But the part to where we get

00:02:37.240 to today is nowadays you'll see all kinds of strange things. You'll have a kid out of wedlock,

00:02:41.320 and then as soon as the child support agency makes that kid a legal child now

00:02:45.680 this kid has claims to certain things that's why sometimes when some historically

00:02:50.320 that would never happen no no it would just be the parent yeah well that this 0.98

00:02:54.880 kid would be a bastard probably pretty hard to prove that first of all 1.00

Pearl - June 04, 2025

How Illegitimate Children Changed Inheritance Forever w⧸ @thisisshah

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