Notorious Woman: The Celebrated Case of Myra Clark Gaines

VIII. A "Prolonged and Interesting Lawsuit"

Mil A "Prolonged and Interesting Lawsuit" The appeal of the Patterson case came before the Supreme Court in its January term, 1848. Since Myra Gaines, in conjunction with her husband, had decided to claim Daniel Clark's estate as his "forced heir" under the accepted will of 1811, the issue of Gaines's birth status became the center of controversy. Determination of legitimacy was a serious problem for post-Revolutionary American courts, both in common-law states and under the Louisiana civil code. English common law used matrimony to separate legitimate from spurious issue—the latter was filius nullius, the child and heir of no one. The bastard, a child born outside of marriage or the offspring of an adulterous union, had no recognized legal relationship to his or her parents—neither for maintenance, custody, nor inheritance. The only heirs of bastards were those "of their own body." Common law set up barriers to full family membership to protect family lineage and property and to promote matrimony by punishing misbegotten offspring.' After 1776, republican views of children raised concerns over the treatment of bastards, and a strong reluctance to stigmatize children helped foster changes in bastardy law. A Virginia statute of 1785 was the first to grant an illegitimate child inheritance rights to the mother's estate. By the 18305, thirteen states, includingLouisiana, had joined Virginia in modifying their inheritance laws. Americancourts also modified the English praci . Michael Grossberg, Governing the Hearth, 196; Carole Shammas, Marylynn Salmon, and Michel Dahlin, Inheritance in America, from Colonial Times to the Present (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1987), 71. 174 Notorious Woman tice regarding legitimization of children after the marriage of their parents. English common law provided that a child could be legitimized only by an act of Parliament—a lengthy, difficult, and expensive undertaking. Civil law, such as operated in Louisiana before 1803, accepted that the subsequent marriage of the parents legitimated the child. After the Revolution, American lawmakers began to follow the civil-law tradition. The 1785 Virginia statute was the first to reverse the common-law practice, and Louisiana continued its continental tradition through its civil codes of 1808 and i8z5.2 Lack of reliable records, informal registration of births, and conflicting laws and customs encouraged nineteenth-century judges to adopt liberal standards of evidence when answering questions of legitimacy. In 1834 a Pennsylvania court declared that the court should "make every intendment in favor of the plaintiff's legitimacy, which was not necessarily excluded by proof." Judges also placed great faith in parental actions toward their children, especially parental statements acknowledging legitimacy. Several states changed their inheritance laws to accept the legitimization of children born outside of wedlock but made exceptions for the offspring of incestuous, bigamous, or adulterous unions. In Louisiana the civil law allowed a father to legitimize his bastard child by a formal statement before a notary, but not in the case of an "adulterous bastard." The Louisiana Code of 1808 defined adulterous bastards as those children "born from an unlawful connection between two persons who at the time the child was conceived were either of them, or both, connected by marriage with some other person." Such children could not be legitimated by the subsequent marriage of their parents. Nor could the natural father or mother bequeath property to their adulterous or incestuous children, even if acknowledged, beyond what was necessary for the maintenance of the child, "or to procure them an occupation or profession by which to support themselves." Should a parent attempt to make a bequest to his adulterous bastard beyond that allowed by the code, that "disposition ...shall be null."3 Louisiana's adherence to the practices of its civil code complicated the i. Grossberg, Governingthe Hearth, 196-7, 201, 104,2.11-2; Shammas, Inheritance in America, 71-1. 3. Senser v. Bower, i Pa. 450 (1834), quoted in Grossberg, Governing the Hearth, 2,01; ibid., 368, note n; Louisiana Code of 1808, Art. 5, p. 44; Art. 46, p. 156; Art. 15, p. 212; and Art. 17, p. 212. A "Prolonged and Interesting Lawsuit" 175 determination of Gaines's status. If Clark and Zulime Carriere had wed— both of them free from other contracts—and Myra was their child—born after their union—then her legitimacy was established, and by Louisiana law she would inherit, at a minimum, four-fifths of the Clark estate. It was not...