Among other things, the Children’s Status Act gives children born out of wedlock the same legal privileges as children born to married couples (e.g., inheritance rights, custody, guardianship, etc.) and provides various legal mechanisms (e.g., court orders) to protect these rights.
The applicants were a man, a woman, and their child. The man’s inability to obtain a dissolution of his first marriage made it impossible for him to marry the woman, which resulted in their child therefore being deemed “illegitimate.” The Court held that the impossibility of obtaining a dissolution of the first applicant’s marriage under Irish law did not breach the first and second applicants’ rights under Articles 12 and 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (the rights to respect for private and family life and the rights to marry and found a family, respectively).&nbs
