The current law states that illegitimate children have no automatic right to inherit from their father’s estate, whereas legitimate children are entitled to between a third and two-thirds of their father’s movable estate - which is typically everything other than land.

It has been long-recognised that the current law is unacceptable. The Legislation Committee of the States recommended in 2001 that legitimate and illegitimate children should be treated equally and that proper provision should be made for dependants of the deceased. In 2003 the States adopted the recommendations in principle, but there was no further progress in the matter.

The Jersey Community Relations Trust commissioned a report last October from Professor Meryl Thomas, an independent legal expert, who concluded that the current treatment of legitimate and illegitimate children in Jersey law breaches the European Convention on Human Rights – opening the possibility of legal challenges.

Under the new proposition all children of the deceased are to be treated equally, irrespective of legitimacy. Furthermore, the draft law states that when a will refers to children or issue, it is to be assumed that illegitimate children are included unless they are expressly excluded. One exception to this law is the case of children born as result of assisted reproduction; in this case the child has no right to inherit from a donor and a donor has no right to inherit from the child.

The changes will only apply to estates of persons who die after the law comes into force.

Commenting on the proposed changes, Paul Harben, partner in charge of the probate department at Crill Canavan, the Jersey-based law firm, said they are long overdue and added that further changes will be needed to remove all inconsistencies in Jersey’s current inheritance laws.

“Once these amendments have been passed there will still be two more changes that need to be made to the island’s inheritance laws,” said Harben. “These are proper provision for the dependants of a deceased person, including unmarried partners, and the respective rights of widows and widowers over each other’s estates (which are different, sometimes for arcane reasons) must be equalised. The current differential treatment of widows and widowers is another area that Professor Thomas found to be contrary to the European Convention on Human Rights.”