Status of unborn person

Though the death person posses no legal personality, the case is otherwise in case of unborn child. There is nothing in law to forbid a man from owing property before he s born. His ownership is contingent as he may never be born yet but it is a real and present ownership. 

A man may settle property upon his wife and his unborn children to be born of her. Even if he dies intestate, his unborn child will inherit his estate. However many restrictions have been imposed in this connection . No testator can direct his fortune be accumulated for a hundred years and then distribute among his descendants. A child in the womb of his mother is for many purposes regarded by the legal fiction as already born. In the words of Coke, “The law in many cases hath consideration of him in respect of the apparent expectation of his birth.” To what extent an unborn person can possess personal and proprietary rights is a somewhat unsettled question . 

It has been decided that a posthumous child is ennobled to compensation under Lord Campbell;s Act for the death of his father. Willful or negligent injury inflicted in the child in the womb , by reason of it dies after having been born alive , amounts to murder or manslaughter. A pregnant woman condemned to death is respited as of rights until she has been delivered of her child. 

The rights of a unborn children , whether proprietary or personal , are all depends on his birth as a living human being. The legal personality assigned to him by way of anticipation falls away ab initio if he never takes his place among the living . Abortion and child killing are crimes but such acts do not amount to murder or manslaughter unless the child is born alive before he dies. 

A posthumous child may inherit , but if he dies in the womb or is still born , his inheritance does not take effect and no one can claim though him The case will be differently if he lived for a hour after his birth . If some of the beneficiaries of trust are unborn persons , the trust can not be varied without obtaining the consent of the court on their behalf .