Legitimacy (family law)
（重定向自Illegimate）
![Elizabeth I of England](/Images/godic/202502/08/Elizabeth_I_Unknown_Artist5730.jpg")
![Percentage of births to unmarried women, selected countries, 1980 and 2007.[22]](/Images/godic/202502/08/Non_marital_by_countries5730.gif")
![The Outcast, by Richard Redgrave, 1851. A patriarch casts his daughter and her illegitimate baby out of the family home.](/Images/godic/202502/08/TheOutcastRichardRedgrave5730.jpg")
![Magdalene laundries were institutions that existed from the 18th to the late 20th centuries, throughout Europe and North America, where](/Images/godic/202502/08/Magdalen-asylum5731.jpg")
Legitimacy, in Western common law, is the status of a child born to parents who are legally married to each other; and of a child conceived before the parents obtain a legal divorce. Conversely, illegitimacy (or bastardy) is the status of a child born outside marriage.