Supreme Court clarification on Illegitimate Children

A bench of Justices B S Chauhan and J Chelameswar in the Supreme Court issued a clarification on a petition filed by advocate Uday Gupta, who had questioned certain sweeping observations made by the Madras high court while dealing with the issue of live-in relationships. Importantly, the SC said children born out of prolonged live-in relationships could not be termed illegitimate. The SC said that if a man and woman "lived like husband and wife" for a long period and had children, the judiciary would presume that the two were married.

Justices Chauhan and Chelameswar further clarified that, if a man and woman are living together for a long time as husband and wife, though never married, there would a presumption of marriage and their children could not be called illegitimate."


With the former Governor of AP and senior Congress leader ND Tiwari who finally  had to own Rohith Shekhar Sharma as his legitimate son, with the Delhi HC also declaring it after the DNA testing proving it , this ruling would come as much needed respite for Rohith and his mother Ujjwala ,where they had a 6 year long battle for the truth to come out about his legitimacy as a ND Tiwari’s son.