It seems by the Gardner peerage case that strong moral improbability that the husband is not the father is sufficient to bastardize the issue. Thirdly, if born beyond a competent time after the coverture has determined. The principal right which bastard children have, is that of maintenance from their parents. To protect the public from their support, the law compels the putative father to maintain his bastard children. But this hard rule has been somewhat mitigated in some of the states where, by statute, various inheritable qualities have been conferred upon bastards.
Bastards can acquire the rights of legitimate children only by an act of the legislature.
By the laws of Louisiana, a bastard is one who is born of an illicit union. An adulterous bastard is one produced by an unlawful connexion between two persons, who, at the time he was conceived, were, either of them, or both, connected by marriage with some other person or persons. Incestuous bastards are those who are produced by the illegal connexion of two persons who are relations within the degrees prohibited by law. Nevertheless, fathers and mothers owe alimony. Alimony is due to bastards, though they be adulterous or incestuous, by the mother and her ascendants.