Do Children Born Outside Marriage Inherit on Intestacy in Ontario?

Whether a child's parents were married has no bearing on that child's right to inherit from them under Ontario law. This might sound obvious today, but it is worth stating plainly, because older assumptions about "legitimacy" still surface in family conversations — and because the practical questions that come up in these families are often about proving parentage, not about legal entitlement.

The Short Answer

Ontario law does not distinguish between children based on whether their parents were married, previously married, or never married at all. A child's right to inherit from a parent on intestacy — and a parent's right to inherit from a child, for that matter — depends on the legal parent-child relationship, not on the parents' marital status.

This reflects a long-settled area of Ontario family and estates law: the legal concept of a "legitimate" versus "illegitimate" child, which historically affected inheritance in many jurisdictions, has no place in how Ontario treats children's status today.

Why This Matters in Practice

Because the legal principle itself is simple, most of the real-world complexity in this area comes from a different question entirely: proving who the child's parent actually is, especially where there was no marriage, no birth registration naming both parents, or no established relationship between the parent and child during their lifetime.

Establishing Parentage When It Isn't Already Clear

For children of married parents, or parents who jointly registered the birth, parentage is often already well documented. Where that documentation doesn't exist — for example, a parent who was never named on a birth certificate, or a child conceived and raised without ongoing involvement from one parent — establishing the parent-child relationship for an intestacy claim can require additional evidence, potentially including:

• Birth registration records
• DNA or other scientific evidence of parentage
• Evidence of an acknowledged relationship, such as financial support or contact over time
• Court declarations of parentage obtained during the parent's lifetime, if any exist

This evidentiary question is separate from — and often more practically important than — the underlying legal principle that marital status doesn't matter.

What This Means in Blended and Complex Families

Modern families often include children from more than one relationship, some inside a marriage and some outside it. Under Ontario's intestacy rules, all of a deceased parent's children generally share in that parent's estate as one group, without regard to which relationship each child came from. A parent who wants a different outcome — for instance, treating children unequally for reasons specific to their family — needs a will to say so, because the default intestacy formula will not draw that distinction on its own.

Where This Can Get Complicated

An estranged parent-child relationship

Being estranged from a parent, or having had little to no relationship with them, does not remove a child's legal status as their child, and does not by itself remove intestacy rights. Family conflict and legal entitlement are separate questions.

A parent who was never told about the child, or vice versa

Where parentage was not acknowledged or known during the parent's lifetime, sorting out an intestacy claim can require more evidence and more time than a straightforward case. This is exactly the kind of situation where getting a lawyer involved early — often before the estate is fully administered — protects the child's position.

Disputes among other beneficiaries

Other family members sometimes resist recognizing a child born outside marriage, particularly where that child was not previously known to them. Ontario law does not permit other beneficiaries to simply exclude a legally established child from their intestacy share because of family disagreement.

Frequently asked questions