Pater semper incertus
Pater semper incertus

Summary/Abstract: Pater semper incertus - the father is always unknown, was a legal proverb of the 16th century. The jurists thus expressed the fact that it was not legally possible to prove the paternal family and descent relationship. „Pater semper videtur incertus, ob difficultatem ... probationis, quae impossibilis dicitur“. This was particularly unfortunate when it came to determining a maintenance debtor in the case of illegitimate children. In other legal contexts - in the criminal liability of incest or compliance with the ban on marriage due to kinship - the non-provability of paternal descent was accepted, but in maintenance law, economic necessity repeatedly forced people to think about how nutritional obligations are stipulated and who is financially responsible for the child is determined could. In this way, the possibilities of proving questions of paternal descent had become the subject of extensive jurisprudential discussion in the 16th century.

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