Imamiyah Law Code
[Translated by Neil B. E. Baillie (who lived 1799-1883). A digest of
Moohummudan law: compiled and translated from authorities in the original
Arabic, with an introduction and explanatory notes, Vol. 2: The doctrines
of the Imameea code of jurisprudence on the most important of the same
subjects. Lahore, Pakistan, 1974.]
Chapter IV. Of Lian ("curse").
Section First. Its Pillars.
[...]
The second cause of lian (curse) is the denial of a child. But
for the operation of this cause it is necessary that delivery should take
place at six months or more from the time of conjugal intercourse, and
not beyond the extreme period of gestation. It is further requisite that
the intercourse should have been under a permanent contract. If the woman
should give birth to a full-grown child within six months from conjugal
intercourse, the child is not affiliated to her husband, and may therefore
be denied by him without lian. But if they differ, after consummation,
as to the time of the pregnancy, recourse must be had to mutual lian.
And a child is not affiliated to the husband unless access to the wife
was possible, and he was able for matrimonial intercourse. If, then, a
boy under nine years of age should go in to his wife, and she should give
birth to a child, it is not affiliated to him; otherwise, however; if the
boy should have attained to ten years or more; from the possibility of
his being an adult, as puberty is sometimes; though rarely; found at that
early age. Yet if he should deny the child there can be no lian,
as there is no law for it in such circumstances, and it must be delayed
until he has attained to puberty and discretion. But if he should die,
whether before or after attaining to both, without denying the child, it
must be affiliated to him, and both wife and child are entitled to participate
in his inheritance. A child is not affiliated to an eunuch who is mujboob
[castrated], though this is liable to doubt; and if a person is only one
of these, that is, an eunuch or a mujboob, the child is affiliated
to him, and cannot be denied without lian.
[...]