ARTICLE III: ON RESTITUTION ON ACCOUNT OF ADULTERY

812. Principles. - I. Each adulterer is bound in solidum to repair all damages of the family, if the crime was voluntary on each side, because the whole is imputed to each. Hence 1° all expenses which the husband sustained in nourishing and educating the offspring must be restored. But if these expenses are compensated by the labor of the spurious son, damage which afterward must be repaired is not in reality given to the father. 2° If the illegitimate son with legitimate or other innocent heirs (but not those of the adulteress alone) has already received the inheritance, compensation according to proportion must be made to these.¹

II. The adulteress must restore from paraphernal goods (and, if surviving the husband, from goods coming to herself) to husband and children through donations, through contract, testament, etc. If she does not have them, let her administer the family more diligently, be more sparing in private expenses, and work more diligently insofar as state permits.

III. If the woman consented by force or fear, the adulterer alone is bound; but he who by contract took all damage upon himself is bound in the first place.

813. Questions. - Query 1° Is a woman bound to reveal her crime if she cannot repair the damage in another way?

Resp. Negatively, speaking generally. The reason is 1° because commonly this revelation cannot be made without great infamy, and often also not without danger of death, or perpetual hatred, or other grave evils; 2° because with difficulty could she repair the damage even by it, especially since the son, except in the case in which the mother as adulteress would be condemned in the external forum, is not bound to give faith to her. Except: 1) if the mother is of lost reputation; 2) if by manifesting herself to the spurious son she would probably hope that the son would believe her and would cede the goods, nor would there be feared further great infamy or vexation of the mother; 3) if she could avoid the damage by manifesting herself only to the husband. But the cases of these exceptions, especially of the second and third, are very rare, not to say metaphysical.²

814. • Query 2° What in doubt whether the offspring is of the husband or of the adulterer, or from this adulterer rather than from another?

Resp. to the 1st, more probably, adulterers are bound to nothing, because the damage is not established.³

Resp. to the 2nd. Negatively; see n. 154.

Query 3° Must those things be restored which are given or left to a spurious person because he is thought legitimate?

Resp. Negatively, unless either the spurious person knows himself to be such (n. 894), or some unjust means is used so that another be impeded from obtaining those gifts (n. 692. R. 5°), for example if the adulteress, knowing that some rich man is going to give to the children of her husband, substitutes the spurious child.¹

815. • Query 4° If wealthy adulterers or fornicators send offspring to a foundling hospital, are they bound to repay the expenses?

Resp. It is controverted. The opinion more probable to S. Alph.² denies it, because foundling hospitals have been erected for all indiscriminately abandoned infants, who are cast off by parents. Nor does it stand in the way that aids are supplied by the Government or by the Municipality for these little children, because these are assigned for abandoned children generally, without attention being paid to the parents. Moreover hospices of this kind have been instituted for this end, that illegitimate children be freed from the danger both of eternal and temporal death, to which illegitimate children of the rich are also exposed. In practice parents are to be exhorted that, at least under the title of penance, they contribute something to the foundling hospital.