Louisiana Historical Law Guide

Contents

Legal Ages at a Glance

General Principles

A civil law state

Louisiana's private law came from France and Spain, and behind them from Rome. Its rules for families, property, and inheritance were set out in written codes, and those codes governed every year this guide covers.

Two words will help from the start. Louisiana's counties are called parishes. And most transactions of any consequence were made by authentic act — a document drawn up before a notary, who kept the original himself instead of handing it to the parties. The rest of the civil-law vocabulary is explained where it first does work below.

That practice is why the notarial record often survives where nothing else does, and it names the parties, their parents, and their marital status. The parish clerk of court holds conveyance, mortgage, and succession records.

The law arrived in three layers:

• French law (about 1699 – 1769). The Custom of Paris, the written customary law of the Paris region, governed the colony, supplemented by royal ordinances and, for slavery, the Code Noir adapted for Louisiana in 1724. Justice was administered by the Superior Council at New Orleans.
• Spanish law (1769 – 1803). Spain took possession in fact when General Alejandro O'Reilly promulgated his ordinance on 25 November 1769, abolishing French law and the Superior Council and installing Spanish law and the Cabildo. The working authority was Las Siete Partidas, with the Recopilación behind it. Spanish notaries produced the colony's records, and Spanish law kept the Code Noir in force.
• American statehood (1803 onward). The United States bought Louisiana in 1803 and organized the Territory of Orleans in 1804. Spanish law continued to govern private matters until the territorial legislature enacted the Digest of the Civil Laws now in Force in the Territory of Orleans on 31 March 1808. Louisiana became a state in 1812.

The three codes

Three civil codes carry the years from 1808 through 1950, and each prints the article numbers of the one before it, so a rule can be traced backward from any of them:

For any given year, the rule in force is the article of the code then in effect. Because the Revised Civil Code of 1870 prints its 1825 predecessor's number in brackets beside each article, the chain from 1825 to 1870 can be read straight off the page.

The common-law exception for crimes

Criminal law took the opposite path. The territorial Crimes Act of 1805 adopted the common law of England for crimes and criminal procedure¹. That act remained the basic law of crimes until the Louisiana Criminal Code replaced it in 1942². So Louisiana ran civil law for families, property, and successions, and common law for prosecutions — which is why a Louisiana criminal file and a Louisiana succession file follow such different rules.

Legal Age of Adulthood

Majority at twenty-one

Full legal age in Louisiana was 21. The rule is stated in one sentence: minors are those of both sexes who have not yet attained the age of one and twenty years complete, and they remain under the direction of tutors till that age; when they have attained that age they are said to be of full age³. There was no different age for women at any point in the period.

The code also fixes a second, lower threshold that is easy to mistake for majority. Males who have not attained fourteen years complete, and females who are under twelve, are under the age of puberty; those who have reached those ages are called adults⁴. "Adult" in a Louisiana record therefore means a person past puberty, not a person of full age — a distinction that matters when reading marriage and succession papers.

What a minor could and could not do

A Louisiana minor could own property outright — by inheritance, donation, or purchase — at any age. What the law restrained was his power to bind himself.

A minor's engagement was not simply void. It was subject to restitution, the civil law's remedy for undoing a contract that damaged someone the law protected; minors, persons under interdiction (placed under a curator for incapacity), and married women all had the benefit of it. Where restitution was granted, the minor could not be made to pay back what he had received unless it was proved that the money had accrued to his benefit⁵.

The relief had a time limit built into it. Once a person ratified in majority an engagement he had subscribed as a minor, he could no longer avoid it — and that was so whether the engagement had been null in its form or merely open to restitution⁶. A confirmation or ratification executed shortly after a twenty-first birthday is therefore worth reading closely: it usually dates the majority, and it tells you a transaction had been made during minority.

Emancipation and the records it makes

A minor did not have to wait for twenty-one. Louisiana had three routes out of minority, and each one leaves a document.

Three points are worth carrying into the records. A minor emancipated only for administration could not bind himself for more than one year's revenue¹³. Emancipation by marriage could not be revoked¹⁴. And an emancipated minor could demand an account from his tutor and a settlement of the tutorship¹⁵ — so an emancipation is usually followed within months by a tutor's final account naming the whole family.

A minor could also be emancipated against his parents' will where they treated him excessively badly, refused him support, or gave him corrupt examples¹⁶. That proceeding is rare, and it is worth reading when you find it.

Guardians changed shape in 1870

One point about guardianship belongs here, because it decides which record to look for. Under the Civil Code of 1825 guardianship of a minor came in two stages. A child below the age of puberty was under a tutor. Once past puberty — 14 for a boy, 12 for a girl — the minor passed to a curator, and stayed there until emancipation or majority¹⁷. A curator did the same work a tutor did, but for the older minor.

The Revised Civil Code of 1870 ended the split and placed every unemancipated minor under a tutor¹⁸. The word curator survives in a few articles carried over from 1825, and it kept its separate meaning for adults placed under interdiction.

So for a minor between 1825 and 1870 the file to hunt for may be a curatorship rather than a tutorship, and a parish index that shows nothing under tutorship is worth searching again under the other word.

Marriage

Who was old enough to marry

From the colonial period until 1934 a boy could marry at 14 and a girl at 12. Those are the civil law's ages of puberty, and the capacity to marry followed them¹⁹. The code reached the question from the side of the officiant rather than the couple. Ministers of the gospel and magistrates were forbidden to marry any male under fourteen or any female under twelve. One convicted of doing so was removed from office if a magistrate, or deprived forever of the right to celebrate marriages if a minister²⁰.

Act 140 of 1934 raised those ages to 18 for a man and 16 for a woman. The same act let a district judge authorize a younger marriage in extraordinary circumstances where the parents or guardians consented. The judge heard the evidence in chambers, the application was kept off the record, and the order giving no reasons was attached to the marriage certificate²¹. So for 1934 to 1950 the marrying ages are 18 and 16, and an underage marriage in those years should have a judge's order filed with the certificate.

That drafting matters for research in both periods. The penalty fell on the celebrant, never on the couple, and the article said nothing about nullity. The Louisiana Supreme Court held in 1946 that a marriage below the stated age was valid all the same²². A marriage record showing a bride of fifteen is therefore a record of a real marriage, not a defective one.

Parental consent

Consent was required for any minor — anyone under 21, of either sex. The minor who had reached the competent age to marry had to have the consent of his father and mother, or of the survivor of them, and if both were dead, of his tutor. He had to furnish proof of that consent to the officer who issued the license²³. A person of full age had instead to furnish proof of age²⁴.

Missing consent did not undo the marriage. The code said plainly that the marriage of a minor contracted without the consent of the father and mother could not for that cause be annulled, so long as the other formalities had been observed²⁵. What it did instead was hand the parents a weapon that shows up in wills. A parent could lawfully disinherit a child for ten named causes, and the tenth is that the son or daughter, being a minor, married without the consent of his or her parents²⁶. Where a Louisiana will disinherits a child, an underage runaway marriage is one of the likeliest reasons, and the will must state the cause²⁷.

The license the ceremony and the return

A valid Louisiana marriage required a ceremony before an authorized celebrant, under a license. No one could celebrate a marriage without first obtaining a special license issued by the officer appointed to grant licenses in the parish where the marriage was to take place²⁸.

The record this creates is unusually good:

Two rules round this out. No marriage could be contracted or celebrated by procuration — that is, by proxy³⁰. And anyone could formally oppose a marriage, which leaves a court file that often explains a family quarrel³¹.

Common-law marriage was never recognized

Louisiana never allowed a couple to marry by agreement and living together. The license and the ceremony were not formalities that could be waived, and the state has held to that from the colonial period to the present day. The Louisiana Supreme Court put it flatly in 1933: a common-law marriage cannot be contracted in Louisiana, and a couple living as husband and wife without a ceremony were in a state of concubinage³².

There is an important exception, and it catches a great many migrating families. A common-law marriage validly contracted in a state that allowed one was recognized as a valid marriage in Louisiana as a matter of comity between states³³. So a couple who became husband and wife informally in Texas or Mississippi and then moved to Louisiana were married here, and the widow inherited as a widow. What you are looking for in that case is proof of the marriage in the state where the couple were living when it began, not a Louisiana license that never existed.

The rule has a sharp consequence in successions. People who lived together in open concubinage could give each other nothing in immovable property, and a gift of movables between them could not exceed one-tenth of the value of the donor's estate. Couples who afterwards married were excepted³⁴. Where a Louisiana will leaves a long-standing companion a strikingly small share, or where heirs sue to cut a legacy down to a tenth, this article is usually the reason, and the pleadings will describe the household in detail.

Because informal marriage counted for nothing, Louisiana built two substitutes that do the same work for a researcher, and both are covered below: the putative marriage, which saves a defective ceremony, and the legalization by notarial act that Reconstruction opened to couples who had never been able to marry at all.

A null marriage that still counts

A marriage declared null still produces its civil effects for the parties and their children, if it was contracted in good faith³⁵. Where only one party acted in good faith, the marriage produces its civil effects in that party's favor and in favor of the children born of the marriage³⁶.

This is the putative marriage, "supposed marriage." Its effect is that a bigamous or otherwise defective Louisiana marriage does not automatically bastardize the children or strip the innocent spouse. When a succession record treats children of an apparently void marriage as legitimate heirs, the putative marriage doctrine is usually why.

What made a marriage impossible

The impediments were few and are quickly stated. A marriage required parties willing to contract, able to contract, and contracting according to the forms prescribed by law³⁷, with consent freely given — not given to a ravisher, extorted by violence, or founded on a mistake as to the person³⁸. Persons already married could not contract another³⁹. Marriage was prohibited in the direct ascending and descending line, and that prohibition reached children born outside marriage as well as legitimate ones⁴⁰; among collaterals it was prohibited between brother and sister of the whole or half blood, legitimate or not, and between uncle and niece and aunt and nephew⁴¹. All other impediments from relationship or affinity were abolished⁴².

Race and marriage

Under the Code Noir of 1724 marriage between white colonists and Black people was forbidden, and clergy were forbidden to perform such marriages.

The Civil Code of 1825 stated the antebellum rule in one article: free persons and slaves were incapable of contracting marriage together, the celebration of such marriages was forbidden and the marriage void, and there was the same incapacity and the same nullity for marriages contracted by free white persons with free people of color⁴³.

The Reconstruction legislature repealed that bar in 1868, and the repeal is visible twice over. The Revised Civil Code of 1870 omits the article entirely: the marriage chapter runs from bigamy straight to the prohibited degrees, with no race provision in between⁴⁴. And the Revised Statutes of 1870 name the dead article expressly. They extend the right to legalize a private or religious marriage to persons of whatever race or color, and to marriages formerly prohibited by article 95 of the Civil Code, by any other article of the code, or by any law of the State⁴⁵.

The bar returned in 1894. Act 54 rewrote article 94 of the code, which until then had covered only incest in the direct line, and added a prohibition on marriage between white persons and persons of color. The act forbade the celebration of such a marriage and declared it null and void, so this time the nullity was written into the statute itself⁴⁶. It was extended in the following decades by acts criminalizing interracial cohabitation and the officiating of such a marriage, and it stood in article 94 until Loving v. Virginia struck it down in 1967.

For research, the window between 1868 and 1894 is real. Interracial marriages were lawfully contracted and recorded in Louisiana during those years, and they appear in the ordinary marriage records.

Enslaved people and freed people

The rule here changed with the regime, and getting the period right tells you which record to look for.

Under French and Spanish rule, enslaved people married in the Church, and the law provided for it. The Code Noir of 1724 applied the ordinary forms of marriage to enslaved and free people alike, and required only the master's consent — not the consent of the couple's own parents⁴⁷. A priest could not marry an enslaved couple without proof that the master agreed, and a master could not force an enslaved person to marry against their will⁴⁸. A husband, wife, and their children under the age of puberty held by the same master could not be seized or sold away from one another, and any sale that separated them was void⁴⁹. Spanish law kept the Code Noir in force. So for roughly 1724 to 1803 a sacramental marriage record for an enslaved couple is not a substitute for the legal record — it is the legal record, and Louisiana's Catholic parish registers hold them.

Under American rule the marriage survived in the church and lost its effect in law. The Civil Code of 1825 put it plainly: enslaved people could not marry without their masters' consent, and their marriages produced none of the civil effects that follow from marriage⁵⁰. The Louisiana Supreme Court had already held that an enslaved person lacked the civil capacity the contract required, and that emancipation restored it⁵¹. From 1825 to 1865, then, the church register is the only record of the union, and it carries no civil consequence — which is exactly the gap the 1868 act below was passed to close. The Freedmen's Bureau marriage registers kept in Louisiana in the 1860s sit alongside it.

Louisiana's remedy was an opt-in legalization by notarial act. A couple went before a notary and declared their marriage, and the declaration made it good. That produced a much fuller document than a bare register entry, and it exists for the couples who came forward. The statute is Act 210 of 1868⁵², carried into the Revised Statutes of 1870. It provided that all private or religious marriages contracted in the State before it passed were valid and binding as if every formality had been observed — so long as, within two years, the parties appeared before a notary (or a consul, if abroad) and made an authentic act declaring⁵³:

• that they were married,
• the date on which the marriage was contracted,
• the names and ages of the children born of it, and
• an acknowledgment of those children as their legitimate offspring.

The consequences were retroactive and complete. A marriage so legalized took full effect from the date it was privately or religiously contracted, and the children acknowledged in the act took all the rights of legitimate children⁵⁴. The marriage was deemed contracted under the community of acquets and gains unless the act said otherwise⁵⁵. The right applied to persons of any race, and expressly to marriages formerly barred by article 95⁵⁶. And couples who had simply lived together as man and wife before the act could use the same procedure, legitimating their children by doing so⁵⁷. The only disqualification was some other legal impediment — an existing marriage, for instance — since an impediment of race or color alone did not bar relief⁵⁸.

The Louisiana Supreme Court read the statute as confirming that such unions had been null until legalized, and applied it to couples who had been enslaved and had lived together with an enslaver's consent⁵⁹.

For a researcher this is the document to hunt for. An authentic act of legalization gives a marriage date that may predate emancipation, and a list of children with their ages — often the only record that fixes a formerly enslaved family's structure before 1865. Look for it in the notarial records and conveyance books of the parish, within roughly two years of the act, and read it alongside the Freedmen's Bureau registers.

Louisiana also opened legitimation more generally. An act of 1870 gave natural fathers and mothers the power to legitimate their natural children by an act before a notary and two witnesses, provided that at the time of conception there was no legal impediment to the parents' intermarriage except those resulting from color or the institution of slavery⁶⁰. The proviso is the whole point: it reaches exactly the couples whom slavery and the race bar had prevented from marrying. The resulting notarial acts of legitimation name both parents and the children, and they are the best substitute Louisiana offers for a cohabitation bond. The courts read it generously. The 1894 marriage bar did not repeal it, so a white father could still legitimate by notarial act the children born to him and a woman of color while their parents could lawfully have married⁶¹.

Property Ownership

Which men could own land

Every free man could acquire, hold, and convey land, whatever his race. Free men of color — the gens de couleur libres, one of the largest and wealthiest free Black populations in the South — bought, held, mortgaged, and sold real estate throughout the antebellum period, and their transactions fill the notarial books of New Orleans and the river parishes.

Owning was one thing and living freely was another. From the 1830s Louisiana barred free people of color from entering the state, tightened the rules on freeing an enslaved person, and after 1857 forbade manumission altogether. None of that took away the right to hold land, but it shaped who was in the state to hold it, and a family that disappears from the records in those decades may have been pushed out rather than died out.

A foreign-born man could own land in Louisiana on the same terms as anyone else, and he did not have to naturalize first. The code subjects the foreigner residing in the State, and his property within its limits, to Louisiana law⁶²; the incapacities to inherit that it does set out turn on want of existence and on unworthiness — a failure of duty toward the deceased — rather than on where a man was born⁶³. In a state settled by successive waves of French, German, Irish, Italian, and Isleño families, this matters: an immigrant ancestor may hold land and pass it to his heirs with no naturalization paper anywhere in the file.

The one universal restriction attached to enslaved men, who could own nothing: whatever an enslaved person possessed belonged in law to the enslaver.

Community property was the default

Louisiana's marital property system is the community of acquets and gains — a jointly owned fund holding everything the couple gained during the marriage, divided in half when the marriage ended. It applied to every marriage unless the couple signed a marriage contract saying otherwise. That contract (contrat de mariage) is a notarial act made before the wedding, and it is one of the richest Louisiana family documents: it commonly names the parents of both parties, lists what each brought to the marriage, and settles a dowry. Where a Louisiana widow's estate settles on terms the ordinary community rules cannot explain, a marriage contract is usually why.

Four things fell into the community. The profits of everything the husband administered. The produce of the work and labor of both husband and wife. Anything given to the two of them jointly. And anything bought during the marriage — even where the deed named only one spouse, because what counted was the date of the purchase and not the name on it⁶⁴.

Debts followed the same line. Debts contracted during the marriage fell on the common fund, while whatever each spouse owed beforehand was paid out of their own property⁶⁵. A couple who married elsewhere and afterwards moved to Louisiana came under the community as to whatever they acquired after arriving⁶⁶.

The practical rule for researchers is short: land bought during a Louisiana marriage is community property and half of it belongs to the wife, even though the deed names only the husband. Half of every such tract passes at her death to her heirs, not his — which is why Louisiana successions so often open on the death of a woman who appears nowhere in the conveyance records.

The husband as head and master

Management was another matter. The husband was the head and master of the community; he administered its effects, disposed of the revenues they produced, and could sell them for value without his wife's consent or permission⁶⁷. He could not give away community land (immovables), nor give away all or a fixed share of the goods (movables), except to set up the children of the marriage. If he sold community property fraudulently to injure his wife, she had an action against his heirs in support of her claim to one half, on satisfactorily proving the fraud⁶⁸.

So a Louisiana husband's deed of community land carries his signature alone, and it is perfectly good. His wife's name simply was not needed on it. The head and master rule lasted until 1980.

The wife's own property and when she signed

A married woman kept her own separate estate. All property not declared to be brought in marriage by the wife, or given to her in consideration of the marriage, or to belong to her at the time of the marriage, is paraphernal — her own property, outside both the community and any dowry⁶⁹. She had the right to administer her paraphernal property personally, without the assistance of her husband⁷⁰; paraphernal property she did not administer separately was treated as under her husband's management⁷¹.

Administering was not disposing. The wife, even when separate in estate from her husband, could not sell, give away, mortgage, or acquire anything — whether as a gift or for value — unless her husband joined in the act or consented in writing⁷². She could not appear in court without her husband's authority, even if she was a public merchant or held her property separately⁷³; if he refused, the judge could empower her⁷⁴. A woman separated from bed and board — a separation ordered by a court, short of divorce — needed no authorization at all, because that separation carried with it a separation of property and dissolved the community⁷⁵.

This gives a clean reading rule for Louisiana deeds:

A joint deed by husband and wife is a signal that the land was hers, and it is worth following back to a succession or a marriage contract. Her acting alone is a signal that the marriage had ended in separation.

A married woman's other disabilities are useful markers, because each one leaves an authorization in the file. Without her husband's authorization or the judge's she could not:

• accept a succession⁷⁶ or renounce one⁷⁷;
• accept a donation⁷⁸;
• sue for a partition⁷⁹; or
• make a gift during her lifetime, called a donation inter vivos⁸⁰.

She could always make a will without him⁸¹. The whole scheme of disabilities was swept away by the Married Women's Emancipation Act of 1928⁸².

Children and land

A child could own land at any age, taking it by inheritance, gift, or purchase. Selling it was the constraint, and Louisiana handled that through the family meeting — the institution that produces the best family documents in the state's records.

A family meeting had to be composed of at least five relations, or friends in default of relations, of the person on whose interest they were called to deliberate⁸³. They were selected by proximity, beginning with the nearest; a relation was preferred to a connection of the same degree, and among relations of the same degree the eldest was preferred⁸⁴. They had to live in the parish where the meeting was held or within thirty miles⁸⁵. Anyone whose interests conflicted with the minor's was incompetent to sit, even if he was among the nearest relations⁸⁶. The tutor needed the judge's special authorization, on the advice of the family meeting, to sue for a partition of a minor's inheritance⁸⁷.

The value of this for research is hard to overstate. A family meeting held to authorize the sale of a child's land produces a notarial minute of the meeting (a procès verbal) naming five of the child's nearest relatives, stating how each is related, and recording where each lives. That is a ready-made pedigree, and it is filed with the tutorship in the parish records.

Witnesses to deeds and acts

Louisiana conveyances of any consequence were authentic acts — instruments executed before a notary. An authentic act was passed before a notary in the presence of two witnesses, free, male, and aged at least fourteen years, or of three witnesses if the party was blind; where the party could not sign, the notary made him affix his mark⁸⁸. Sales of succession property signed by the sheriff, the purchaser, and two witnesses were also authentic acts⁸⁹.

An act that failed as an authentic act through the officer's incompetence or a defect of form still availed as a private writing if the parties signed it⁹⁰. The authentic act was full proof of the agreement against the parties and their heirs unless proved a forgery⁹¹.

A donation of immovable property required an act before a notary and two witnesses, on pain of nullity⁹² — so a Louisiana gift of land is always a notarial act, never a private paper.

For public inventories, the standard was higher: witnesses had to be males of full age, domiciled in the place where the inventory was made⁹³.

Free people of color and enslaved people

Free people of color owned property on the same terms as anyone else, and the deed and notarial records prove it. What the law added was a labeling requirement carried from the territorial Black Code of 1806 into the Digest of 1808: free people of color were to be identified as such in legal documents, styled free man of color or free woman of color, abbreviated f.m.c. and f.w.c.

However demeaning its purpose, that rule is a gift to the researcher. It means a free family of color can be traced through the conveyance and succession indexes by the designation itself, and that the racial status of a party to a Louisiana act before 1865 is usually stated on the face of the document.

Enslaved people could possess nothing in their own right, and could transmit nothing by succession or legacy, because whatever they possessed was their master's property. Two Spanish-period doctrines cut against this and left records: the peculium, property an enslaved person held with the master's sufferance, and coartación, self-purchase, which Governor Carondelet's decree of 1795 confirmed. Acts of self-purchase were passed before Spanish notaries and survive in the notarial archives; they name the person buying their freedom, the price, and the enslaver.

Inheritance

The words the records use

Louisiana calls the whole subject succession — both the estate and its transmission. A few words recur and are worth fixing at the outset. An heir succeeds by law, a legatee by will. A usufruct is the right to use property and take its fruits while someone else holds the naked ownership. To collate is to bring a lifetime gift back into account at the parent's death.

The code also sorts a family into three lines, and the rules below turn on them constantly. Descendants run downward — children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren. Ascendants run upward — parents, grandparents, great-grandparents. Collaterals are the relatives who share an ancestor with a person without being in his direct line: brothers and sisters, uncles and aunts, nephews and nieces, cousins.

The heir takes at the moment of death

Start here, because it explains more missing Louisiana records than anything else in this guide. An heir acquired the succession the instant the person died, by operation of law alone, before he took any step to claim it or said a word about accepting it⁹⁴. He owned it from the moment of death, with no court order needed.

The consequence is blunt: where a person died leaving no debts, no minor children, and no heir who disagreed, the family could simply take the property, and nothing whatever went into court. A search that turns up no succession file is therefore not evidence that your ancestor died landless. It is often evidence of the opposite — an uncomplicated estate passing to adults who all agreed. Turn the rule around and a succession file tells you something forced it: minor heirs, debts, an absent heir, a will to prove, or heirs who could not agree. Read the reason the court was involved before you read anything else, because the reason is usually the genealogy.

Forced heirship meant children could not be cut out

The defining Louisiana rule is that children were forced heirs: a fixed share of a parent's estate was reserved to them by law, and no gift and no will could take it away. The doctrine came in with the French settlers about 1700 as part of the Custom of Paris, and the transfer to Spain left it untouched, because Spanish law protected children just as firmly⁹⁵.

What changed over time is how much a parent could give away. Under Spanish law, and under the Digest of 1808 that restated it, a parent could give away only one-fifth of his property — four-fifths was reserved to the children⁹⁶. The Civil Code of 1825 loosened that considerably and, following the French code, graduated it by the number of children: a parent's gifts, whether made during life or by will, could not exceed two-thirds of his property if he left one child, one-half if he left two, and one-third if he left three or more⁹⁷. That is the rule the Revised Civil Code of 1870 carried forward, and it governed until well after 1950. Descendants of any degree count for the child they represent.

The date therefore changes the arithmetic. In an 1815 succession the children take four-fifths between them; in an 1840 succession a father of two could give half his estate to a stranger.

Turned around, the portion reserved to the children — the légitime — ran as follows from 1825 onward:

Parents were protected too: with no children, a disposer leaving a father, a mother, or both could not give away more than two-thirds⁹⁸. In these cases the heirs are called forced heirs because the donor cannot deprive them of the portion reserved for them by law, except where he has just cause to disinherit them⁹⁹. With no legitimate descendants and both parents dead, a person could dispose of everything¹⁰⁰.

Disinheritance was possible but hard. It had to be made in one of the forms prescribed for testaments¹⁰¹, by name and expressly and for a just cause¹⁰², and the just causes were only those the code listed¹⁰³ — ten of them for a parent disinheriting a child, ending with the minor who married without parental consent¹⁰⁴. The testator had to state the reason in the will, and the other heirs had to prove the facts¹⁰⁵.

The research payoff is that a Louisiana will usually cannot disinherit the children. However the will reads, the children take their reserved portion, so the succession record will name them.

Collation brought earlier gifts back into the estate

A child who had been helped during a parent's lifetime had to collate — to bring the gift back into the estate and have it counted against his share¹⁰⁶. Nobody had to impose the duty: collation was presumed unless the parent had expressly excused it, by declaring the gift an "advantage or extra portion" in the act of donation or in a later notarial act¹⁰⁷¹⁰⁸. Even an excused gift came back if what remained was too little to give the other children their légitime¹⁰⁹.

For research this is close to a gift. A succession involving collation reconstructs what the parents gave each child during their lives, with dates and values — including daughters whose dowries appear nowhere else and children who had long since moved away.

Who inherits when there is no will

In legal successions no difference of sex and no right of primogeniture are known; they are regulated by the most perfect equality¹¹⁰. Legitimate children inherit from their parents and grandparents without distinction of sex or primogeniture, though born of different marriages, in equal portions, share and share alike where they stand in the same relation to the deceased, and by branches of the family where grandchildren step into a dead parent's place¹¹¹.

The order beyond the children runs: ascendants and siblings together, then remoter ascendants, then collaterals¹¹², the nearest in degree excluding the others¹¹³.

The surviving spouse ranked last

The surviving spouse came last in the order of heirs. As to the deceased's separate property, the surviving husband or wife inherited only when the deceased left neither lawful descendants, nor lawful ascendants, nor collateral relations — and then in company with, or behind, the deceased's acknowledged natural children¹¹⁴. In default of lawful relations, of a surviving spouse, and of acknowledged natural children, the succession went to the State¹¹⁵.

The code drew an asymmetry worth noticing. A surviving wife not separated from bed and board inherited from a husband who left no lawful descendants, ascendants, or collaterals, to the exclusion of any duly acknowledged natural child; a surviving husband in the mirror situation did not inherit unless his wife left no acknowledged natural children¹¹⁶.

A surviving spouse put in possession had to have an inventory made and give security, and could not sell or otherwise part with the immovables for three years except by authority of the court, at public auction, and where the sale was deemed necessary¹¹⁷. Those three-year restrictions leave a paper trail.

That harsh position softened steadily. A series of acts — in 1844, 1910, 1916, 1920, and 1938 — gradually improved the survivor's standing¹¹⁸, and the direction of travel was always the same: from usufruct toward ownership. The decisive step came early in the twentieth century. Act 57 of 1910, amended and re-enacted by Act 80 of 1916, rewrote article 915 so that the survivor took the deceased's community share as an owner rather than as a usufructuary. Where the deceased left no ascendants and no descendants and had not disposed of that share by will, the survivor inherited it in full ownership; where the deceased left descendants, they took it; and where the deceased left no descendants but a father or mother, that share was halved between the parents and the surviving spouse¹¹⁹. That is still the shape of the rule in 1950.

The date therefore matters enormously. In an 1880 succession the widow gets the use of her husband's community half; in a 1920 succession she may own it. Where a Louisiana record shows a widow taking full title to community property, check the year before assuming a will or a sale explains it.

What the survivor did get

The survivor's real protection was not inheritance but the community. Half the community belonged to the survivor outright, in his or her own right.

On top of that the code gave a usufruct:

• Where the deceased left no ascendants or descendants and did not dispose of his or her share of the community by will, the survivor holds that share in usufruct for life¹²⁰.
• Where the deceased left issue of the marriage with the survivor and did not dispose of the community share by will, the survivor holds a usufruct for life over so much of the deceased's share as the issue inherit — and that usufruct ceases whenever the survivor enters into a second marriage¹²¹.

The remarriage clause is a dating tool. Where a Louisiana succession record shows a widow's usufruct being terminated and the children taking full ownership, look for her second marriage in that year.

The marital portion

Where the marriage had been unequal in wealth, the code added a claim. If the wife brought no dowry, or one inconsiderable with respect to the husband's condition, and either spouse died rich leaving the survivor in necessitous circumstances, the survivor could take the marital portion out of the estate¹²²:

Anything the deceased left the survivor as a legacy counts against the portion. An amendment of 1926 provided for the allowance to be paid periodically during the administration of the succession¹²³.

Accepting a succession and why minors leave inventories

An adult heir could accept an estate outright, taking on the dead person's debts personally, or accept with benefit of inventory and be liable only up to what the estate was worth¹²⁴. A minor never had to choose: the law accepted for him, always with benefit of inventory¹²⁵. Benefit of inventory means an inventory, and a Louisiana public inventory is a superb document — every piece of property described and appraised, plus the titles, books, debts, and papers found, with the names and residences of anyone who owed the estate money¹²⁶. Before 1865 it lists the enslaved people by name and age. Wherever minor children survived, look for the inventory.

Tutorship was Louisiana's guardianship

A minor not emancipated was placed under the authority of a tutor after the dissolution of his parents' marriage¹²⁷. There were four sorts of tutorship — by nature, by will, by the effect of the law, and by the appointment of the judge¹²⁸; tutorship by nature took place of right, and every other kind had to be confirmed or given by the judge¹²⁹. In every sort, the tutor was accountable¹³⁰.

Tutorship by nature belonged of right to the surviving mother or father on the dissolution of the marriage by death¹³¹ — so the Louisiana word for a fatherless child's guardian is not a stranger's name but usually the mother's. A tutor by nature had to cause an inventory to be made and an undertutor appointed — a second appointee who looked after the child's interest against the tutor's, and although not compelled to give security, had to give a special mortgage or have the minor's legal mortgage inscribed against his own property¹³². That inscription is findable in the parish mortgage records and dates the opening of the tutorship.

A mother who declined the tutorship still kept charge of her children and their education, the tutor taking only their property¹³³.

Only the parent who died last could name a tutor by will, or by a declaration before a notary and two witnesses¹³⁴.

A tutorship file is also where the family meeting sits, and it is the best document Louisiana produces (see "Children and land," above): five of the minor's nearest relations, named, with each one's relationship and residence given. Any serious step in a tutorship — selling the minor's land, partitioning his inheritance, compromising a claim — required one, so a long tutorship can leave several, spaced years apart, and together they track a family as it moves and marries.

Every tutorship had an undertutor, whom the judge appointed when the letters of tutorship were certified¹³⁵. The undertutor swore an oath¹³⁶, and his duty was to act for the minor whenever the minor's interest opposed the tutor's, and to notify the judge if the tutor failed to render his annual account¹³⁷. Two officials, two sets of papers, and often two families represented.

A Louisiana tutor was fixed in one of the four ways above: by nature, by will, by the effect of the law, or by the judge. The minor never chose his own tutor at any age, because the choice belonged to the law or to the court. The tutorship ended at 21, or earlier on emancipation. The tutor's final account, filed at that moment and naming the minor, is the Louisiana equivalent of the guardian's final settlement. It dates the majority and so approximates a birth year.

Children born outside marriage

The code sorted children born outside marriage into two classes. Those acknowledged by their father are natural children; those not acknowledged by the father, or whose parents were incapable of contracting marriage at the time of conception, or whose father is unknown, are called bastards¹³⁸.

Acknowledgment was a formal act, and it leaves a record: it had to be made by a declaration executed before a notary public in the presence of two witnesses, by the father and mother or either of them, whenever it had not been made in the registering of the birth or baptism of the child¹³⁹. That second clause sends you to the baptismal register — in Catholic Louisiana, the most complete vital record there is. Acknowledgment by the father alone had effect only as to the father¹⁴⁰, and could not be made where the parents were incapable of marrying at conception¹⁴¹.

Legitimation came by two routes:

• By the parents' subsequent marriage. Children born out of marriage, except those born of an incestuous or adulterous connection, could be legitimated by the subsequent marriage of their father and mother, where the parents had legally acknowledged them either before the marriage by an act before a notary and two witnesses, or by the marriage contract itself¹⁴². Children so legitimated have the same rights as if born during the marriage¹⁴³.
• By notarial act, from 1870. A natural father or mother could legitimate a natural child by an act before a notary and two witnesses declaring that intention — but only where the parents could have contracted marriage at the time of conception, and not where the parent had legitimate ascendants or descendants¹⁴⁴.

What such a child could inherit turned on which parent and on who else survived:

Bastard, adulterous, and incestuous children could inherit nothing, the law allowing them only maintenance¹⁴⁹, and their parents could not give them more than was necessary for sustenance or to procure them an occupation¹⁵⁰.

Wills

Louisiana recognized three principal classes of testament — nuncupative or open, mystic or sealed, and olographic¹⁵¹ — and verbal wills resting only on witnesses' recollection were abolished¹⁵².

The olographic will is the one to know. It is subject to no other form and may be made anywhere, even out of the State¹⁵⁹ — so a perfectly valid Louisiana will may be a single handwritten sheet with no witnesses at all.

How it was proved is the genealogy. An olographic testament was opened if sealed, and had to be acknowledged and proved by the declaration of two credible persons who swore they recognized it as entirely written, dated, and signed in the testator's hand, having often seen him write and sign during his lifetime¹⁶⁰. Those two people are named in the probate record, and the statute's own test — having often seen him write — means they were close enough to the deceased to know his hand. Where the witnesses to an attested will had died or moved away, the same device was used: two credible persons declared that they recognized the signatures on the will or the act of superscription¹⁶¹. Harvest those names. They are neighbors, kin, business partners, and priests, and they are frequently the only contemporaries of your ancestor the record will ever name. Words added by another hand count as not written, and unapproved erasures are disregarded¹⁶².

The age to make a will

Below sixteen, a minor's one power to give property away was the marriage contract: he could make a donation to the person he was about to marry¹⁶³. He needed the consent of the same relations whose consent his marriage required, or, if they were dead, a court's authorization; with it he could give whatever a married person of full age could give¹⁶³. A minor above sixteen could dispose mortis causa — by will — and could leave the same amount a person of full age could, needing no authorization or concurrence from his curator to do it¹⁶⁴.

So the will age in Louisiana is 16, and a sixteen-year-old's will is as full as an adult's. Two guards accompany it: a minor with the right to dispose mortis causa could not do so in favor of his tutor or of his teachers while under their authority¹⁶⁵; and even after coming of age he could not give to a former tutor until the final account of the tutorship had been rendered and settled, though this did not apply to relations who had served as tutors¹⁶⁶.

Executors and the people who witness

A minor could not be a testamentary executor, even with the authorization of his tutor or curator¹⁶⁷, so the executor age is 21. More generally, he who could not obligate himself could not be an executor¹⁶⁸. A married woman could not accept an executorship without her husband's consent; where there was a separation of property between them she could accept with his consent, or on his refusal by the court's authorization¹⁶⁹. Where the testator named no executor or the one named refused, the judge appointed one himself — a dative testamentary executor, meaning one given by the court rather than named in the will¹⁷⁰.

Witnesses to a will were tightly restricted. The following persons were absolutely incapable of being witnesses to testaments: women of whatever age; male children who had not attained sixteen years complete; persons insane, deaf, dumb, or blind; and persons whom the criminal laws declared incapable of exercising civil functions¹⁷¹. Nor could a testament be witnessed by those constituted heirs or named legatees under any title¹⁷² — with mystic testaments excepted, since the witness there does not know the contents¹⁷³. Where residence was required, it meant residence in the parish where the testament was made¹⁷⁴.

Two things follow for research. The names at the foot of a Louisiana will are always men, always at least sixteen, and never beneficiaries — so they are neighbors, friends, or unrelated kin, and worth harvesting as associates. And a woman could not witness a Louisiana will before 1950, so a female name in the witness line is worth a second look. Usually it means the will was made in another state, or that the name belongs to the clerk who recorded the document rather than to a witness.

Taxation

What was taxed

Four kinds of levy on individuals leave usable records.

The property tax reached land and, before 1865, enslaved people. Louisiana taxed slaves from the territorial period: an act of 1805 imposed a tax on slaves, charged to the owner¹⁷⁵. Parish assessment rolls therefore list a slaveholder's real estate and the number of people he held, and they run annually where they survive.

License and occupation taxes fell on trades and professions, and an ancestor's occupation can sometimes be recovered from a license roll when it appears nowhere else.

The poll tax, also called a capitation tax, was a flat charge on a person rather than on property. A "poll" is simply the taxable person.

Income and sales taxes arrived in the 1930s as part of the Long program and are of little genealogical use.

The poll tax from 1819 to 1934

Poll taxes in Louisiana are much older than the poll tax most researchers have heard of, and for the first fifty years they were mostly a local affair. The earliest ones on the record are town charters. The legislature let Harrisonburgh tax its inhabitants in 1819, did the same for Opelousas in 1821 and 1823 and for Washington in St. Landry Parish in 1835, and was still handing out the power to Grand Coteau in 1867 and to Vermilionville, now Lafayette, in 1869¹⁷⁶. A tax of that kind reached only the people living inside that one town, and the record it left is a town record. Alongside them the state ran a poll tax of its own through its revenue acts, and the act of 1855 sets it out plainly: one dollar a year from each free white male inhabitant over twenty-one who was not serving in the United States army or navy, the money going to the free public schools of the parish where it was paid. The assessment act of 1850 shows the same tax already being collected, since it made every collector report his poll-tax receipts separately from what he took in on land and on slaves¹⁷⁷.

That 1855 wording decides who can be on an antebellum list, so it is worth slowing down over. The state poll tax before the Civil War reached white men only. A free man of color paid property tax and license tax like anybody else, but he was not a poll, and his name will not be on a poll list from these years. Enslaved men were not polls either. They were taxed as property, counted to the owner.

No Louisiana constitution mentioned a poll tax before 1868. For any year before that, then, there is no single rule about who owed it. You have to read the particular act, and the first thing to check is whether it was a statewide act or a charter for one town.

The Constitution of 1868 changed that. It told the legislature to tax every male inhabitant of the state over twenty-one, at no more than a dollar and a half a year, for schools and charities¹⁷⁸, and half the money went to the free public schools¹⁷⁹. The legislature carried it out by reusing the old sentence and striking two words out of it: the revenue act of 1868 charged a dollar to each male inhabitant over twenty-one not attached to the army or navy, with “free white” gone¹⁷⁸. From that year a Black man belonged on the poll list on the same terms as his white neighbor. The Constitution of 1879 narrowed the purpose to schools alone, set the amount between one dollar and a dollar and a half, and sent it to the schools of the parish where it was collected. It kept the same taxpayers: every male inhabitant over twenty-one¹⁸⁰.

Notice what those two constitutions do not say. Neither one has a top age. From 1868 until 1898 a man went on owing the poll tax for the rest of his life, so finding a name on a list from these years tells you the man was over twenty-one and nothing more.

The Constitution of 1898 fixed the form that matters most, and it is the first one to set an upper age limit. The General Assembly was to levy a dollar a year on every male inhabitant between twenty-one and sixty, for the public schools of the parish where it was collected¹⁸¹. That is where the familiar bracket of 21 to 60 comes from. It does not reach back any further than 1898.

One change is easy to miss and matters for anyone searching the rolls of the 1920s. The Constitution of 1921 carried the same dollar tax and the same ages forward, but dropped the word male: it imposed the tax on every resident of the State between 21 and 60¹⁸². Women had won the vote the year before. From 1921 to the repeal, a Louisiana poll-tax roll can name women as well as men.

A few people were let off. Someone who was deaf and could not speak, someone who was blind, and anyone under twenty-three who had already paid every poll tax charged to him did not have to show receipts at the polls, and the 1921 constitution added people away in the armed forces in wartime¹⁸³. Read that as an exception to the voting rule rather than to the tax, since the article that imposed the tax made no such exception. A man in one of these groups may still turn up on a list of people assessed.

So the names on a surviving list depend on the year it was made. A list drawn between 1898 and 1921 names men only, each of them between twenty-one and sixty, which puts his birth in the sixty to twenty-one years before the roll. A list drawn between 1921 and 1934 names women on the same terms as men, within the same ages. A list from 1868 to 1898 names men over twenty-one of any age at all, so it brackets nothing at the top. And for anything earlier, the act itself, not the constitution, tells you who belonged on the page.

Two acts describe the lists themselves, which is useful when you are asking a courthouse what to look for. Act 66 of 1882 ordered the tax collector in each parish to hand his parish school board a list, arranged by ward, of everyone who owed the poll tax, due by the first Saturday in October each year, and then a second list by the first Saturday in February showing who had paid and who had not¹⁸⁴. Act 89 of 1888 moved the October list to the parish assessor and left the February return to the sheriff and tax collector¹⁸⁵. So from the 1880s onward the record to ask for is a ward-by-ward list of names held by the parish school board, and there are two of them for every year.

Orleans Parish is the exception to almost everything here. Act 56 of 1894 handed poll-tax collection there to the treasurer of the City of New Orleans, so for New Orleans the paperwork is a city record rather than a parish one¹⁸⁶.

One more distinction is worth keeping straight, because the two records look alike. A poll list names every man who owed the tax. A property assessment roll names the person assessed and then counts the polls in his household in a column, so the other men under his roof are a number rather than a name. If you want names, ask for the poll list.

The same constitution made payment a condition of voting: no one under sixty could vote who had not paid, on or before 31 December of each year, the poll tax for the two preceding years, a rule that did not start working until after the state election of 1900¹⁸⁷. Payment was reckoned by tax year rather than by election year, so a man voting in 1912 needed receipts for 1910 and 1911, and those are the years his receipts carry. Poll-tax receipts were therefore worth keeping, and where they survive they place a named taxpayer — a man through 1921, a man or a woman after it — in a named parish in a named year.

The tax was repealed in 1934, at Huey Long's urging: a joint resolution approved on 14 July 1934 proposed the amendment to the constitution's suffrage sections that abolished it¹⁸⁸.

The 1934 amendment did not simply delete the tax, and what it put in its place is worth knowing about. Instead of paying, a voter now had to sign a poll book kept by the sheriff of his parish for each of the two years before he voted, giving his post office address, his ward and precinct, and his street address where he had one. A man who could not write had a deputy sign for him and made his mark before two witnesses. Registration for 1934 stayed open until the last day of May 1935¹⁸⁸. Those poll books are a record in their own right, and they name people no poll-tax receipt ever would.

One caution for anyone using poll-tax records as evidence. The 1934 amendment was so tangled that many people paid the tax that year anyway, and a further amendment in 1940 was needed to settle the point, saying plainly at last that neither a poll tax nor a poll book could stand between a person and the ballot¹⁸⁹ — so receipts exist for years after the repeal.

Race and these taxes make a two-part story, and the parts pull in opposite directions. On property, race made no difference: Louisiana taxed free people of color on what they owned under the ordinary revenue acts, and a free man of color appears on the assessment rolls in the same columns as his white neighbors, on the same footing. On the poll tax it made all the difference, and then none. Before 1868 only free white men were polls. From 1868 the word white was gone and every man over twenty-one owed it. Then after 1898 the tax became the instrument itself: written without a word about race, it worked as a voting restriction, and it fell hardest on Black and poor voters.

Courts

Jury service

Jury service was governed by a long series of jury acts rather than by one lasting statute, and the qualifications changed with them. Before the Civil War service was limited to free white men who were qualified electors. The Constitution of 1868 and the federal Civil Rights Act of 1866 opened it to Black men, and Reconstruction juries in Louisiana were racially mixed. To find the rule for a particular year before 1894, look the subject up in Marr's Annotated Index, which lists every act by subject with its number, year, and page¹⁹⁰.

The act that governed the end of this period is Act 135 of 1898, and its terms are worth setting out because they are the ones a researcher will meet in a jury venire. A juror had to be a man of full age, which meant 21. He also had to be:

• a citizen of the United States and of Louisiana;
• a bona fide male resident of the parish for the year before he served;
• not under interdiction, not charged with any crime, and never convicted of an offense punishable by hard labor unless pardoned; and
• a competent and intelligent person able to try both civil and criminal cases¹⁹¹.

Two features stand out. The qualifications turned on citizenship, residence, age, and character alone, so a man served whether or not he owned land. And the statute provided expressly that no distinction should be made on account of race, color, or previous condition¹⁹².

The statute's promise and the practice diverged. District judges had discretion to rule a man incompetent for a particular case on grounds that included ignorance of the English language¹⁹³. In Orleans Parish the commissioners drew names from citizens qualified to register as voters¹⁹⁴. That tied jury service to the suffrage restrictions of the 1898 constitution and, through them, to the poll tax. It was the mechanism by which Black men and poor men were kept off Louisiana juries after 1898, whatever the statute said.

Grand jurors faced an extra bar: a grand juror had to be able to read and write English and be a person of well known good character and standing in the community¹⁹⁵.

Women were not eligible before 1950. When eligibility came, it came with a condition: no woman was drawn for jury service unless she had first filed with the clerk of court a written declaration of her desire to be subject to it¹⁹⁶. That opt-in regime lasted until 1975.

Criminal responsibility

Because the Crimes Act of 1805 brought in the common law of England for crimes, the common-law ages governed:

• Under 7 — a child was incapable of committing a crime.
• 7 to 14 — presumed incapable, a presumption the State could rebut.
• 14 and over — full criminal responsibility.

Louisiana created juvenile courts in the first decade of the twentieth century, and the sequence matters because it tells you when — and where — a juvenile file can exist at all:

The effect on the records is the point: after 1908 in Orleans, and later elsewhere, a child under 17 has a juvenile court file rather than a criminal case file, and juvenile files are ordinarily closed. In a rural parish before 1921, the same child would still appear on the ordinary criminal docket — so the absence of a juvenile record is a fact about the parish and the year, not about the child. When the Criminal Code of 1942 replaced the Crimes Act, it fixed a statutory minimum age of criminal responsibility at ten years, leaving the juvenile courts' jurisdiction untouched²⁰².

Witnesses

A witness of any age could testify, if he or she was of proper understanding. The code says it plainly: the competent witness of any covenant or fact whatever, in civil matters, is a person of proper understanding²⁰³. Competency, not age, was the test, and the judge decided it witness by witness.

The circumstance that a witness was a relation, a party to the cause, interested in the result, or in the actual service or salary of one of the parties did not make him incompetent, though it might diminish his credibility²⁰⁴. An attorney could not give evidence of what his client had confided without the client's consent, though being employed in the cause did not disqualify him²⁰⁵.

A husband could not be a witness for or against his wife, nor a wife for or against her husband — except where they were joined as plaintiffs or defendants and had a separate interest, when each was competent as to that separate interest²⁰⁶.

Women and people of color in court

Women were competent witnesses in the ordinary courts throughout. What barred them was not the courtroom but the notary's office and the will: women of whatever age could not witness a testament²⁰⁷, witnesses to authentic acts had to be male²⁰⁸, and witnesses to public inventories had to be males of full age²⁰⁹. Those disabilities sat alongside a general article providing that women could not be appointed to any public office nor perform any civil functions except where the law specially declared them capable, while widows and unmarried women of age could bind themselves as sureties or endorsers as men of full age could²¹⁰.

Under the territorial Black Code and the antebellum law, enslaved people and free people of color could not testify against white persons; their evidence was received in matters among themselves. The Constitution of 1868, the Reconstruction statutes, and the federal Civil Rights Act of 1866 gave people of color full competence to testify.

Enslaved people were tried in their own tribunals under the Code Noir and the Black Code rather than in the ordinary criminal courts, so look for those proceedings among parish court and police jury records rather than in the criminal dockets.

Sources & Where to Verify

Constitutions

• Louisiana. Constitution Adopted by the State Constitutional Convention of the State of Louisiana, March 7, 1868. New Orleans: Printed at the Republican Office, 1868. Art. 141 devotes half the poll-tax proceeds to the free public schools. Digital images. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/constitutionadop00loui (accessed 26 July 2026).
• Louisiana. Constitution of 1898, art. 197 (suffrage), art. 198 (poll tax as a condition of voting), and art. 231 (the annual $1 poll tax on males 21–60). Law Library of Louisiana research guide. https://lasc.libguides.com/c.php?g=967774 (accessed 26 July 2026).
• Louisiana. Constitution of 1921, art. VII, §§ 41, 52 (juvenile jurisdiction; women jurors). The 1921 constitution is printed in the front matter of the Louisiana session-law volumes of the period; its poll-tax, jury, and juvenile-court provisions are reprinted in the Law Library of Louisiana research guides cited below.

Codes and Compilations

• Civil Code of the State of Louisiana: Preceded by the Treaty of Cession with France, the Constitution of the United States of America, and of the State. [Paris]: [Impr. de E. Duverger], 1825. Contains art. 95, barring marriage between free persons and slaves and between free white persons and free people of color. Digital images. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/civilcodestatel01louigoog (accessed 26 July 2026).
• Civil Code of the State of Louisiana: With the Statutory Amendments, from 1825 to 1853, Inclusive. Compiled by Thomas Gibbes Morgan. New Orleans: Bloomfield & Steel, 1861. The antebellum code as actually applied, with the amendments in place. Digital images. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/civilcodeofstate00loui (accessed 26 July 2026).
• Louisiana State Law Institute. Compiled Edition of the Civil Codes of Louisiana. 2 vols. Louisiana Legal Archives, vol. 3. Baton Rouge: State of Louisiana, 1940. Prepared under Joseph Dainow pursuant to Act 165 of 1938; a later edition revised by Dainow appeared in 1973 and is the one cited by the Louisiana Supreme Court in Succession of Lauga. Prints the 1808, 1825, and 1870 articles in parallel columns; the fastest way to trace a rule across all three codes. Digital images. LSU Law Digital Commons. https://digitalcommons.law.lsu.edu/la_civilcode_book_i/ (Book I) and https://digitalcommons.law.lsu.edu/la_civilcode_book_iii/ (Book III) (accessed 26 July 2026).
• Wolff, Solomon, comp. and annot. Constitution and Statutes of Louisiana. 3 vols. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1920. The constitution with amendments to January 1920 and the Revised Statutes of 1870 as amended, with case annotations. It prints all general acts except those that amend articles of the Revised Civil Code and Code of Practice. Contains the jury act (Act 135 of 1898), the legitimation act (Act 68 of 1870, p. 96), notes on Act 54 of 1894, and, at Revised Statutes §§ 2212–2216, the Reconstruction provisions legalizing private and religious marriages by authentic act. Digital images. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/constitutionand00wolfgoog (accessed 26 July 2026).
• A Digest of the Civil Laws now in Force in the Territory of Orleans, with Alterations and Amendments Adapted to Its Present System of Government. New Orleans: Printed by Bradford & Anderson, Printers to the Territory, 1808. The first Louisiana code, enacted 31 March 1808, with the French and English columns. Art. 19 carries the Spanish rule reserving four-fifths of a parent’s property to the children. LSU publishes the text page by page; for the printed volume itself, consult an original, the 1968 photolithographic facsimile of the De la Vergne copy from the Louisiana State University School of Law, or the bicentennial edition from Claitor’s Publishing Division. Transcription of the 1808 text. LSU Law Center, Digest of 1808. https://digestof1808.law.lsu.edu/; see also Civil Law Online, https://law.lsu.edu/clo/digest-online/ (accessed 5 August 2026).
• Louisiana Civil Code, with Article Histories. LSU Law Center, Louisiana Civil Code Online. Each article printed with the chain of earlier articles behind it. https://lcco.law.lsu.edu (accessed 26 July 2026).
• The Revised Civil Code of the State of Louisiana. New Orleans: F. F. Hansell, Law Bookseller, Stationer and Printer, 1880. The code of 1870 in force for the whole later period, and the volume behind most of the citations here; each article prints its Civil Code of 1825 number in brackets. The articles used most here are arts. 36–37 (puberty and majority), 97 (parental consent), 104–118 (marriage, nullity, opposition, and the putative marriage), 198–203 (legitimation and acknowledgment), 246–281 (tutorship, undertutor, family meeting), 366–385 (emancipation), 915–924 (the surviving spouse), 1228–1243 (collation), 1476–1479 (the age to give by will), 1481 (donations between people living in concubinage), 1493–1494 (the legitime), 1570–1592 (the forms of testament and their witnesses), 2228–2229 (restitution), 2234 (witnesses to authentic acts), and 2382–2404 (the marital portion and the community). Digital images. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/revisedcivilcod00louigoog (accessed 26 July 2026).
• The Revised Statute Laws of the State of Louisiana, from the Organization of the Territory to the Year 1869 Inclusive. New Orleans: Printed at the Republican Office, 94 Camp Street, 1870. §§ 2212–2216, pp. 436–37, legalize private or religious marriages, give the legalized marriage full effect from the date it was contracted, apply the law of acquets and gains to it, extend the right to persons of every race and to marriages formerly barred by art. 95, and reach couples already living together as man and wife. The same provisions are printed a second time in the volume, under the heading “Legitimacy,” at §§ 2174–2178, pp. 429–30. Also reprinted in Wolff, Constitution and Statutes of Louisiana, vol. 2, and in Marr's and Dart's compilations. Digital images. HathiTrust. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.hl3at9 (accessed 5 August 2026).

Session Laws

• Acts of the Legislature of Louisiana. Year-by-year index with links to the digitized session volumes on HathiTrust. Law Library of Louisiana, "Louisiana's Justice of the Peace." https://lasc.libguides.com/justice-of-the-peace (accessed 26 July 2026). No single catalog record holds every volume of the run, so a year missing from one set is often digitized in another library's; the volumes for 1910, 1916, 1928, 1938, and 1942 used here are listed separately below. Where a page is given for an act not among those five volumes, it was recovered from Wolff's Constitution and Statutes of Louisiana (1920) or from Marr's Annotated Index (1895), both cited in this list. Acts relied on here: Act 210 of 1868, p. 278; Act 68 of 1870, p. 96; Act 54 of 1894, pp. 63–64; Act 135 of 1898, p. 216; Act 82 of 1906, p. 134; Act 83 of 1908, p. 96; Act 57 of 1910, p. 93; Act 48 of 1910, p. 72; Act 80 of 1916, p. 201; Act 160 of 1920, p. 259; Act 119 of 1922, p. 244; Act 283 of 1928, p. 583; Act 140 of 1934, p. 497; Act 230 of 1934, p. 710; Act 408 of 1938, p. 1008; Act 374 of 1940, p. 1409; and Act 43 of 1942, p. 137.
• Acts Passed by the General Assembly of the State of Louisiana at the Regular Session Begun and Held in the City of Baton Rouge, on the Fourteenth Day of May, 1894. Baton Rouge: The Advocate, Official Journal of the State of Louisiana, 1894. Contains Act No. 54, pp. 63–64, restoring the bar on marriage between white persons and persons of color by amending article 94 of the Revised Civil Code. Digital images. HathiTrust. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=iau.31858018023162 (accessed 10 August 2026).
• Acts Passed by the General Assembly of the State of Louisiana at the Regular Session Begun and Held in the City of Baton Rouge on the Ninth Day of May, 1910. Baton Rouge: The New Advocate, Official Journal, 1910. Contains Act No. 57, p. 93, the first rewriting of art. 915 in the surviving spouse's favor. Digital images. HathiTrust. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=njp.32101042991826 (accessed 5 August 2026).
• Acts Passed by the General Assembly of the State of Louisiana at the Regular Session Begun and Held in the City of Baton Rouge on the Fourteenth Day of May, 1928. New Orleans, La.: F. F. Hansell & Bro., Ltd., [1928]. A special edition prepared by R. H. Marr from the acts as published in the Official Journal. Contains Act No. 283, p. 583, emancipating married women. Digital images. HathiTrust. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.b3683176 (accessed 5 August 2026).
• Acts Passed by the Legislature of the State of Louisiana at the Regular Session Begun and Held in the City of Baton Rouge on the Fourteenth Day of May, 1934; Constitutional Amendments Adopted at an Election Held November 8, 1932, and a Special Session of the Legislature Held March 20, 1933. [Place not stated]: Published by authority of the State, 1934. The regular session convened 14 May and adjourned 12 July 1934. Contains Act No. 140, pp. 497–98, raising the marrying ages to eighteen and sixteen, and Act No. 230, p. 710, the joint resolution repealing the poll tax. Digital images. HathiTrust. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.b3683179 (accessed 10 August 2026).
• Acts Passed by the Legislature of the State of Louisiana at the Regular Session Begun and Held in the City of Baton Rouge on the Ninth Day of May, 1938; Constitutional Amendments Adopted at an Election Held November 3, 1936. [Place not stated]: Published by authority of the State, 1938. Contains Act No. 408, p. 1008, rewriting art. 915. Digital images. HathiTrust. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.b3683181 (accessed 5 August 2026).
• Acts Passed by the Legislature of the State of Louisiana at the Regular Session 1942, Begun and Held in the City of Baton Rouge on the Eleventh Day of May Nineteen Forty-two; Constitutional Amendments Adopted at an Election Held November 5, 1940. [Place not stated]: Published by authority of the State, 1942. Contains Act No. 43, p. 137, the Louisiana Criminal Code, whose text was printed in a separate volume under Act No. 7 of 1940. Digital images. HathiTrust. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.b3683183 (accessed 5 August 2026).
• Acts Passed by the General Assembly of the State of Louisiana at the Regular Session Begun and Held in the City of Baton Rouge on the Eighth Day of May, 1916. Baton Rouge, La.: Ramires-Jones Printing Co., 1916. Contains Act No. 80, p. 201, rewriting art. 915 on the surviving spouse's share of the community. Digital images. HathiTrust. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=iau.31858018023253 (accessed 5 August 2026).
• Acts Passed at the First Session of the Legislative Council of the Territory of Orleans. New-Orleans: Printed by James M. Bradford, Printer to the Territory, 1805. Contains the Crimes Act (ch. L, p. 416) and the slave tax (ch. XXXII, p. 336). Digital images. HathiTrust. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.35112204563441 (accessed 26 July 2026).
• Black Code of 1806. Territory of Orleans. The Louisiana Anthology. https://louisiana-anthology.org/texts/brown/brown--black_code--1806.html (accessed 26 July 2026).
• Code Noir of Louisiana. 1724. Arts. VI–X govern marriage — the forms of marriage apply to enslaved and free alike, the master’s consent stands in for the parents’, a priest needs proof of it, and a master may not force a marriage; art. XLIII forbids selling a husband, wife, and their children under puberty away from one another. English translation, 64 Parishes (Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities). https://64parishes.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/LouisianaCodeNoirTranslation.pdf (accessed 4 August 2026). Scholarly translation with the French alongside: Palmer, Vernon Valentine. "The Code Noir of 1724: A Free Translation." Tulane European and Civil Law Forum. https://journals.tulane.edu/teclf/article/view/2887/2707 (accessed 4 August 2026).

Court Cases

• Barrett v. Pierson. 163 La. 541, 112 So. 410 (1927). The marital portion under art. 2382 as amended in 1926. CourtListener. https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/3478621/barrett-v-pierson/ (accessed 26 July 2026).
• Brinson v. Brinson. 233 La. 417, 96 So. 2d 653 (1957). A common-law marriage contracted in a state whose law allows it is recognized as valid in Louisiana, though no such marriage can be contracted here. Justia. https://law.justia.com/cases/louisiana/supreme-court/1957/233-la-417-0.html (accessed 9 August 2026).
• Cottin v. Cottin. 5 Mart. (o.s.) 93 (La. 1817). Unrepealed Spanish law survived the Digest of 1808. CourtListener indexes its copy under a different volume number, an artifact of the reprint numbering of Martin's Reports. CourtListener. https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/7288206/cottin-v-cottin/ (accessed 26 July 2026).
• Davenport v. Davenport. 116 La. 1009, 41 So. 240 (1906). Acknowledgment and legitimation of children of mixed parentage. CourtListener. https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/7252271/davenport-v-davenport/ (accessed 26 July 2026).
• Girod v. Lewis. 6 Mart. (o.s.) 559 (La. 1819). An enslaved person lacked the civil capacity a contract of marriage required, and emancipation restored it. CourtListener. https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/7288342/girod-v-lewis/ (accessed 26 July 2026).
• State v. Golden. 210 La. 347, 26 So. 2d 837 (1946). Article 92 binds the celebrant only and fixes no minimum age, so a marriage below the stated age is valid. Discussed with State v. Priest, 27 So. 2d 173 (La. 1946), in Schilling, "Marriage — Capacity of Minors to Marry," cited below.
• Johnson's Heirs v. Raphael. 117 La. 967, 42 So. 470 (La. 1906). Cohabitation with an enslaver's consent did not of itself make a marriage; such unions were null until legalized by authentic act under Act 210 of 1868, which the opinion names and recites. vLex. https://case-law.vlex.com/vid/heirs-v-raphael-16-898370319 (accessed 4 August 2026).
• Succession of Lauga. 624 So. 2d 1156 (La. 1993). Traces forced heirship and the legitime from the French settlement through the Custom of Paris, the Spanish period, the Digest of 1808, and the Civil Code of 1825, with the article numbers for each. Justia. https://law.justia.com/cases/louisiana/supreme-court/1993/93-ca-0034-2.html (accessed 4 August 2026).
• Succession of Marinoni. 177 La. 592, 148 So. 888 (1933). A common-law marriage cannot be contracted in Louisiana; such a union is recognized only as a state of concubinage.
• Succession of Moore. 232 La. 556, 94 So. 2d 666 (1957). Applies art. 1481, reducing a legacy to a companion in open concubinage to one-tenth of the movables and voiding the gift of immovables. Justia. https://law.justia.com/cases/louisiana/supreme-court/1957/232-la-556-0.html (accessed 9 August 2026).
• Succession of Segura. 134 La. 84, 63 So. 640 (1913). Legitimation under Act 68 of 1870 where color or slavery was the only impediment. CourtListener. https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/7255257/succession-of-segura/ (accessed 26 July 2026).
• Succession of Yoist. 132 La. 309, 61 So. 384 (1913). Act 54 of 1894 did not repeal art. 200 of the Civil Code, so a white father could still legitimate by notarial act the natural children born to him and a woman of color before 1894. CourtListener. https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/7254952/succession-of-yoist/ (accessed 5 August 2026).
• Taylor v. Louisiana. 419 U.S. 522 (1975). Struck down the written-declaration requirement for women jurors. CourtListener. https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/109133/taylor-v-louisiana/ (accessed 26 July 2026).

Secondary and Reference Works

• 64 Parishes. Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities. Entries on free people of color, the Code Noir, and the colonial period. https://64parishes.org (accessed 26 July 2026).
• Connell-Thouez, Katherine. "The New Community of Acquets and Gains in Louisiana." 26 McGill Law Journal 320 (1981). Written on the 1979–80 reform, with a historical survey behind it covering the acts of 1844, 1910, 1916, 1920, and 1938 that improved the surviving spouse’s position. https://lawjournal.mcgill.ca/wp-content/uploads/pdf/3539270-connell_thouez.pdf (accessed 4 August 2026).
• Dainow, Joseph. "The Early Sources of Forced Heirship: Its History in Texas and Louisiana." 4 Louisiana Law Review 42 (1941). The French and Spanish roots of the legitime, and its passage into the Digest of 1808. LSU Law Digital Commons. https://digitalcommons.law.lsu.edu/lalrev/ (accessed 4 August 2026).
• Gladney, Charles G. "The Usufruct of the Surviving Spouse." 25 Louisiana Law Review (1965). Traces the surviving spouse’s usufruct under arts. 915 and 916 of the 1870 code and the marital portion under art. 2382. LSU Law Digital Commons. https://digitalcommons.law.lsu.edu/lalrev/vol25/iss4/5 (accessed 4 August 2026).
• Gross, Ariela J. "Legal Transplants: Slavery and the Civil Law in Louisiana." On the Digest of 1808, the designation of free people of color, and the law of slavery. USC Gould School of Law. https://gould.usc.edu/centers/class/class-workshops/usc-legal-studies-working-papers/documents/09_16_paper.pdf (accessed 26 July 2026).
• Law Library of Louisiana. "A Brief History of the Louisiana Juvenile Courts." The act-by-act sequence from 1906 through the twentieth century. https://lasc.libguides.com/c.php?g=484864 (accessed 26 July 2026).
• Law Library of Louisiana. "A Brief History of Women Serving on Juries." https://lasc.libguides.com/c.php?g=455842 (accessed 26 July 2026).
• Law Library of Louisiana. "Colonial Law in New Orleans, 1718–1803." The Custom of Paris, O'Reilly's ordinance of 1769, and the Spanish sources. https://lasc.libguides.com/ColonialLawinNOLA (accessed 26 July 2026).
• Law Library of Louisiana. "History of the Codes of Louisiana." A guide to each code, the Black Code, the procedural codes, and the criminal code, with dates and enacting acts. https://lasc.libguides.com/c.php?g=254608 (accessed 26 July 2026).
• Law Library of Louisiana. "Louisiana's Poll Tax." Lists every poll-tax act year by year from 1819 to 1924, with links to the digitized session volumes, and reprints the poll-tax and suffrage articles of the constitutions of 1868, 1879, 1898, 1913, and 1921. https://lasc.libguides.com/Louisiana-poll-tax (accessed 9 August 2026).
• Herold, J. B. (Jacob Brooks). Interpretations of Civil Code of Louisiana since 1898: containing the interpretations which the Supreme Court of Louisiana has given to the Articles of the Civil Code … and the amendments which the Legislature has made to the Articles of the Civil Code from the Acts of 1900 to the Acts of 1924. New Orleans: Hauser Printing Company, 1924. Prints each article as amended and names the amending act — the readiest way to date an amendment to the 1870 code. Art. 915 as amended is at p. 149. Digital images. HathiTrust. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=umn.31951d02627793x (accessed 5 August 2026).
• Marr, Robt. H., comp. An Annotated Index of the Acts of the Legislature of Louisiana: Through the Session of 1894, with References to the Decisions of the Supreme Court through the 46th Annual. 2nd ed. New Orleans: F. F. Hansell & Bro., 1895. Indexes the public acts by subject, giving act number, year, and page for each — the fastest way to recover a page citation for an act down to 1894. Digital images. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/anannotatedinde00marrgoog (accessed 4 August 2026).
• Moses, Leslie. "The Law of Descent and Distribution in Louisiana." 6 Southwestern Law Journal 81 (1952). States the law of successions as it stood at the end of this period, keyed to Dart's 1945 code. SMU Scholar. https://scholar.smu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4477&context=smulr (accessed 26 July 2026).
• New Orleans Notarial Archives. A record repository rather than a published work: the notarial acts themselves, including Spanish-period self-purchase acts, marriage contracts, inventories, and the minutes of family meetings, from 1733 forward.
• Sachse, Henry R. "The Evolution of the Regime of Tutorship in Louisiana." 16 Louisiana Law Review 412 (1956). Traces tutorship from Las Siete Partidas through the three codes. LSU Law Digital Commons. https://digitalcommons.law.lsu.edu/lalrev/vol16/iss2/26 (accessed 4 August 2026).
• Schilling, Edwin C., Jr. "Marriage — Capacity of Minors to Marry — Minimum Age." 7 Louisiana Law Review (1947). Quotes art. 92 as amended by Act 140 of 1934 and the proviso allowing a judge to authorize a younger marriage, gives the pre-1934 ages, reports State v. Golden, and notes the curator of a minor past puberty under art. 263 of the Civil Code of 1825. LSU Law Digital Commons. https://digitalcommons.law.lsu.edu/lalrev/vol7/iss3/11 (accessed 9 August 2026).
• Scalise, Ronald J., Jr. "Will Formalities in Louisiana: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow." 80 Louisiana Law Review 1333 (2020). Traces the forms of testament and the witness requirements, including the 1898 reduction for the mystic will. LSU Law Digital Commons. https://digitalcommons.law.lsu.edu/lalrev/ (accessed 26 July 2026).
• U.S. Women's Bureau. The Legal Status of Women in the United States of America: Report for Louisiana. Bulletin of the Women's Bureau no. 157. Law stated as of about 1 January 1938. A digest of Louisiana law on majority, married women's property, community property, wills, successions, tutorship, marriage, and jury service, with citations to the then-current code; use it as a cross-check and read the statute itself. Digital images. FRASER. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/title/legal-status-women-united-states-america-5430 (accessed 26 July 2026).

Citations

1. Acts Passed at the First Session of the Legislative Council of the Territory of Orleans (New-Orleans: Printed by James M. Bradford, Printer to the Territory, 1805), ch. L, p. 416, "An Act for the punishment of crimes and misdemeanors," approved 4 May 1805; digital images, HathiTrust (https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.35112204563441 : accessed 26 July 2026) ↩
2. Acts Passed by the Legislature of the State of Louisiana at the Regular Session 1942, Begun and Held in the City of Baton Rouge on the Eleventh Day of May Nineteen Forty-two ([place not stated]: Published by authority of the State, 1942), Act No. 43, p. 137, the Louisiana Criminal Code, the Code itself printed in a separate volume under Act No. 7 of 1940; digital images, HathiTrust (https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.b3683183 : accessed 5 August 2026) ↩
3. The Revised Civil Code of the State of Louisiana (New Orleans: F. F. Hansell, Law Bookseller, Stationer and Printer, 1880), art. 37; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/revisedcivilcod00louigoog : accessed 26 July 2026). The article was carried from Civil Code of the State of Louisiana ([Paris]: [Impr. de E. Duverger], 1825), art. 41; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/civilcodestatel01louigoog : accessed 26 July 2026); it was later renumbered art. 29 by Acts 1987, No. 125 ↩
4. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 36, carried from the Civil Code of 1825, art. 40 ↩
5. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 2229 [2226] ↩
6. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 2228 [2225] ↩
7. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 366, carried from the Civil Code of 1825, art. 369 ↩
8. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 370, carried from the Civil Code of 1825, art. 373 ↩
9. Revised Civil Code of 1870, arts. 385, 387 ↩
10. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 386 ↩
11. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 379, carried from the Civil Code of 1825, art. 367 ↩
12. Revised Civil Code of 1870, arts. 380, 381 ↩
13. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 371, carried from the Civil Code of 1825, art. 374 ↩
14. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 383 ↩
15. Revised Civil Code of 1870, arts. 369, 381; art. 369 carried from the Civil Code of 1825, art. 372 ↩
16. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 368, carried from the Civil Code of 1825, art. 371 ↩
17. Civil Code of the State of Louisiana ([Paris]: [Impr. de E. Duverger], 1825), art. 263, placing the minor below puberty under a tutor and the minor above puberty under a curator; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/civilcodestatel01louigoog : accessed 26 July 2026). The distinction is described in Edwin C. Schilling Jr., "Marriage — Capacity of Minors to Marry — Minimum Age," 7 Louisiana Law Review (1947), at n. 10; digital images, LSU Law Digital Commons (https://digitalcommons.law.lsu.edu/lalrev/vol7/iss3/11 : accessed 9 August 2026). And see Henry R. Sachse, "The Evolution of the Regime of Tutorship in Louisiana," 16 Louisiana Law Review 412 (1956) ↩
18. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 246, carried from the Civil Code of 1825, art. 261: the minor not emancipated is placed under the authority of a tutor. Curatorship of minors past puberty does not reappear in the 1870 code, though the word curator survives in articles carried over from 1825 and continued to describe the officer appointed for a person under interdiction ↩
19. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 36, read with art. 92, both carried from the Civil Code of 1825, arts. 40 and 93. The code fixed no minimum age for marriage in terms; the age of puberty in art. 36 supplied it, and art. 97 assumed a "competent age to marry" ↩
20. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 92, carried from the Civil Code of 1825, art. 93 ↩
21. La. Acts 1934, No. 140, pp. 497–98 (House Bill No. 357, by Mr. Madison), “An Act to amend and re-enact Article 92 of the Revised Civil Code of 1870, relative to minimum ages of persons marrying,” approved by the governor 13 July 1934. Section 1 forbids ministers of the gospel and magistrates to marry any male under eighteen or any female under sixteen, on pain of removal from office if a magistrate or loss of the right to celebrate marriages if a minister. Section 2 provides that the act shall not apply where, on the application of either party, a district judge finds extraordinary circumstances and the parents or guardians consent; the evidence is presented in chambers, the order does not state the reasons, the application is not a matter of record, and the order is attached to and made part of the marriage certificate. Printed in Acts Passed by the Legislature of the State of Louisiana at the Regular Session Begun and Held in the City of Baton Rouge on the Fourteenth Day of May, 1934 ([Place not stated]: Published by authority of the State, 1934), 497–98; digital images, HathiTrust (https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.b3683179 : accessed 10 August 2026). The amendment is also described in Edwin C. Schilling Jr., “Marriage — Capacity of Minors to Marry — Minimum Age,” 7 Louisiana Law Review (1947); digital images, LSU Law Digital Commons (https://digitalcommons.law.lsu.edu/lalrev/vol7/iss3/11 : accessed 9 August 2026) ↩
22. State v. Golden, 210 La. 347, 26 So. 2d 837 (1946), reading art. 92 as a prohibition on celebrants only and not as a declaration of a minimum age, so that the marriage of a fifteen-year-old girl stood; followed in State v. Priest, 27 So. 2d 173 (La. 1946). Both are discussed in Schilling, "Marriage — Capacity of Minors to Marry"; digital images, LSU Law Digital Commons (https://digitalcommons.law.lsu.edu/lalrev/vol7/iss3/11 : accessed 9 August 2026) ↩
23. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 97, carried from the Civil Code of 1825, art. 99 ↩
24. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 98, carried from the Civil Code of 1825, art. 100 ↩
25. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 112: the marriage of minors contracted without the consent of the father and mother cannot for that cause be annulled if it is otherwise contracted with the formalities prescribed by law, but the want of consent is good cause to disinherit ↩
26. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 1621, cause 10, carried from the Civil Code of 1825, art. 1613 ↩
27. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 1624, carried from the Civil Code of 1825, art. 1616 ↩
28. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 104; and see art. 99 (licenses granted by justices of the peace in Orleans and Jefferson, and by clerks of the district courts elsewhere) ↩
29. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 105, carried from the Civil Code of 1825, art. 107 ↩
30. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 109, carried from the Civil Code of 1825, art. 111 ↩
31. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 108, carried from the Civil Code of 1825, art. 110 ↩
32. Succession of Marinoni, 177 La. 592, 148 So. 888 (1933), holding that a common-law marriage cannot be contracted in Louisiana and that such a union is recognized only as a state of concubinage. And see La. R.S. 14:79.1, added by La. Acts 1960, No. 73, which made entering into a common-law marriage a crime ↩
33. Brinson v. Brinson, 233 La. 417, 96 So. 2d 653 (1957), stating that a common-law marriage contracted in a state whose law sanctions it will be recognized as valid in Louisiana even though such a marriage cannot be contracted here; digital images, Justia (https://law.justia.com/cases/louisiana/supreme-court/1957/233-la-417-0.html : accessed 9 August 2026). To the same effect, Gibbs v. Illinois Central Railroad Co., 169 La. 450, 125 So. 445 (1929), and Bloom v. Willis, 221 La. 803, 60 So. 2d 415 (1952) ↩
34. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 1481, carried from the Civil Code of 1825, art. 1468: those who have lived together in open concubinage are incapable of making to each other any donation of immovables, and a donation of movables between them cannot exceed one-tenth of the whole value of their estate, those who afterwards marry being excepted. Applied in Succession of Moore, 232 La. 556, 94 So. 2d 666 (1957), and Succession of Dupre, 218 La. 907, 51 So. 2d 317 (1951); digital images, Justia (https://law.justia.com/cases/louisiana/supreme-court/1957/232-la-556-0.html : accessed 9 August 2026) ↩
35. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 117, carried from the Civil Code of 1825, art. 119 ↩
36. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 118, carried from the Civil Code of 1825, art. 120 ↩
37. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 90, carried from the Civil Code of 1825, art. 91 ↩
38. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 91, carried from the Civil Code of 1825, art. 92 ↩
39. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 93, carried from the Civil Code of 1825, art. 94 ↩
40. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 94, carried from the Civil Code of 1825, art. 96 ↩
41. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 95, carried from the Civil Code of 1825, art. 97 ↩
42. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 96, carried from the Civil Code of 1825, art. 98 ↩
43. Civil Code of 1825, art. 95 ↩
44. Revised Civil Code of 1870, arts. 93–96 — the 1825 art. 95 has no counterpart in the 1870 code. The repeal was the work of the Reconstruction legislature of 1868; the Revised Statutes of 1870, § 2215, names art. 95 as a prohibition no longer in force ↩
45. The Revised Statute Laws of the State of Louisiana, from the Organization of the Territory to the Year 1869 Inclusive (New Orleans: Printed at the Republican Office, 94 Camp Street, 1870), § 2215, p. 437; digital images, HathiTrust (https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.hl3at9 : accessed 5 August 2026). The same provision is printed again in the volume at § 414, p. 85, under “Civil Code — Amendments,” and is reprinted in Solomon Wolff, comp., Constitution and Statutes of Louisiana, 3 vols. (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1920), vol. 2; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/constitutionand00wolfgoog : accessed 26 July 2026) ↩
46. La. Acts 1894, No. 54, pp. 63–64, “An Act to amend and re-enact Article 94 of the Revised Civil Code of Louisiana, of 1870.” As re-enacted, article 94 barred marriage between persons related in the direct ascending or descending line, extended that bar to children born outside marriage, and provided that Marriage between white persons and persons of color is prohibited, forbidding the celebration of such marriages and declaring it of no effect and null and void. Printed in Acts Passed by the General Assembly of the State of Louisiana at the Regular Session Begun and Held in the City of Baton Rouge, on the Fourteenth Day of May, 1894 (Baton Rouge: The Advocate, Official Journal of the State of Louisiana, 1894), 63–64; digital images, HathiTrust (https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=iau.31858018023162 : accessed 10 August 2026). And see Succession of Segura, 134 La. 84, 63 So. 640 (1913), applying the act ↩
47. Code Noir, or Black Code of Louisiana (1724), art. VII, applying the ordinary ceremonies and forms of marriage to enslaved and free people alike and requiring the master’s consent in place of the parents’; English translation, 64 Parishes (Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities) (https://64parishes.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/LouisianaCodeNoirTranslation.pdf : accessed 4 August 2026). For a scholarly translation with the French text alongside, see Vernon Valentine Palmer, “The Code Noir of 1724: A Free Translation,” Tulane European and Civil Law Forum (https://journals.tulane.edu/teclf/article/view/2887/2707 : accessed 4 August 2026) ↩
48. Code Noir (1724), art. VIII ↩
49. Code Noir (1724), art. XLIII, declaring null both seizures and voluntary sales that separated them ↩
50. Civil Code of 1825, art. 182. Read against the volume: “Slaves cannot marry without the consent of their masters, and their marriages do not produce any of the civil effects which result from such contract.” The article sits in Book I, tit. VI, ch. 3 (“Of Slaves”), alongside art. 174 (a slave may contract only for his own emancipation) and art. 177 (a slave may not be tutor, curator, executor, or attorney, nor a witness except by particular laws). It has no counterpart in the 1870 code, whose revisers struck every article touching slavery ↩
51. Girod v. Lewis, 6 Mart. (o.s.) 559 (La. 1819) ↩
52. Act 210 of 1868, p. 278, “An Act to legalize marriages”; the act is named and its terms recited in Johnson’s Heirs v. Raphael, 117 La. 967, 42 So. 470 (1906). Read in the session volume: Acts Passed by the General Assembly of the State of Louisiana, 1868, 1st leg., 1st sess., p. 278, headed “Legalization of private or religious marriages,” No. 210, “An Act Relative to Marriages,” approved under Governor H. C. Warmoth; digital images, HathiTrust (https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=pst.000018406122 : accessed 5 August 2026). Section 3, at p. 279, provides that marriages so legalized are deemed contracted under the community of acquets and gains, and section 5 extends the act to marriages formerly prohibited by article 95 of the Civil Code. Carried into the Revised Statutes of 1870, §§ 2212–2216 ↩
53. Revised Statutes of 1870, § 2212 ↩
54. Revised Statutes of 1870, § 2213 ↩
55. Revised Statutes of 1870, § 2214 ↩
56. Revised Statutes of 1870, § 2215; and see note 39 above ↩
57. Revised Statutes of 1870, § 2216 ↩
58. Revised Statutes of 1870, § 2212, final proviso — relief was barred only where an impediment other than race or color existed at the date of the private or religious marriage or at any time after it ↩
59. Johnson’s Heirs v. Raphael, 117 La. 967, 42 So. 470 (1906) ↩
60. Act 68 of 1870, p. 96, § 1, "An Act to authorize natural parents to legitimate their natural children"; carried into Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 200, and Revised Statutes of 1870, § 2173 ↩
61. Succession of Yoist, 132 La. 309, 61 So. 384 (1913), digital images, CourtListener (https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/7254952/succession-of-yoist/ : accessed 5 August 2026) — the children were born in 1873 and 1884, when nothing barred their parents’ marriage, and were legitimated by notarial act in 1905, after the bar; the court held Act 54 of 1894 worked no repeal of art. 200 by implication. And see Succession of Segura, 134 La. 84, 63 So. 640 (1913), and Davenport v. Davenport, 116 La. 1009, 41 So. 240 (1906) ↩
62. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 9 [9] ↩
63. Revised Civil Code of 1870, arts. 962–965 [956–959] ↩
64. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 2402, carried from the Civil Code of 1825, art. 2371 ↩
65. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 2403, carried from the Civil Code of 1825, art. 2372 ↩
66. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 2401, carried from the Civil Code of 1825, art. 2370 ↩
67. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 2404, carried from the Civil Code of 1825, art. 2373; the head and master rule ended with Acts 1979, No. 709, effective 1 January 1980 ↩
68. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 2404 ↩
69. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 2383, carried from the Civil Code of 1825, art. 2360 ↩
70. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 2384, carried from the Civil Code of 1825, art. 2361 ↩
71. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 2385, carried from the Civil Code of 1825, art. 2362 ↩
72. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 122, carried from the Civil Code of 1825, art. 124 ↩
73. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 121, carried from the Civil Code of 1825, art. 123 ↩
74. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 124, carried from the Civil Code of 1825, art. 126 ↩
75. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 123, carried from the Civil Code of 1825, art. 125 ↩
76. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 1005, carried from the Civil Code of 1825, art. 999 ↩
77. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 1019, carried from the Civil Code of 1825, art. 1012 ↩
78. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 1545, carried from the Civil Code of 1825, art. 1532 ↩
79. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 1316, carried from the Civil Code of 1825, art. 1239 ↩
80. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 1480, carried from the Civil Code of 1825, art. 1467 ↩
81. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 135; and see art. 1480, second paragraph ↩
82. Acts Passed by the General Assembly of the State of Louisiana at the Regular Session Begun and Held in the City of Baton Rouge on the Fourteenth Day of May, 1928 (New Orleans, La.: F. F. Hansell & Bro., Ltd., [1928]), Act No. 283, p. 583, House Bill No. 688, “Married Women Emancipated,” by Mr. Daboval and Mr. Wingrave. Digital images, HathiTrust (https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.b3683176 : accessed 5 August 2026). Now La. R.S. 9:101 ↩
83. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 281, carried from the Civil Code of 1825, art. 305; repealed by Acts 1960, No. 30, and moved to the Code of Civil Procedure ↩
84. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 282, carried from the Civil Code of 1825, art. 306 ↩
85. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 281 ↩
86. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 283 ↩
87. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 1312, carried from the Civil Code of 1825, art. 1235 ↩
88. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 2234, carried from the Civil Code of 1825, art. 2231 ↩
89. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 2234 ↩
90. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 2235, carried from the Civil Code of 1825, art. 2232 ↩
91. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 2236, carried from the Civil Code of 1825, art. 2233 ↩
92. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 1536, carried from the Civil Code of 1825, art. 1523 ↩
93. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 1110, carried from the Civil Code of 1825, art. 1102 ↩
94. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 941 [935] ↩
95. Succession of Lauga, 624 So. 2d 1156, 1159 (La. 1993), tracing forced heirship in Louisiana from about 1700 through the Custom of Paris and noting that the cession to Spain left it untouched because the institution was equally emphasized in both countries’ law; digital images, Justia (https://law.justia.com/cases/louisiana/supreme-court/1993/93-ca-0034-2.html : accessed 4 August 2026). And see Joseph Dainow, “The Early Sources of Forced Heirship: Its History in Texas and Louisiana,” 4 Louisiana Law Review 42 (1941) ↩
96. A Digest of the Civil Laws now in Force in the Territory of Orleans, with Alterations and Amendments Adapted to Its Present System of Government (New Orleans: Printed by Bradford & Anderson, Printers to the Territory, 1808), art. 19, restating the Spanish rule that a parent’s donations could not exceed one-fifth of his property to the prejudice of his children; the article is identified and the rule stated in Succession of Lauga, 624 So. 2d at 1159 and n., citing the Compiled Edition of the Civil Codes of Louisiana (Dainow ed.), La. Civ. Code of 1808, arts. 19 and 130, at 212, 236 ↩
97. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 1493, carried from the Civil Code of 1825, art. 1480 ↩
98. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 1494, carried from the Civil Code of 1825, art. 1481 ↩
99. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 1495, carried from the Civil Code of 1825, art. 1482 ↩
100. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 1496 ↩
101. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 1618, carried from the Civil Code of 1825, art. 1610 ↩
102. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 1619, carried from the Civil Code of 1825, art. 1611 ↩
103. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 1620, carried from the Civil Code of 1825, art. 1612 ↩
104. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 1621 ↩
105. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 1624 ↩
106. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 1228 [1306] ↩
107. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 1230 [1308] ↩
108. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 1232 [1310] ↩
109. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 1234 [1312] ↩
110. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 893, carried from the Civil Code of 1825, art. 889 ↩
111. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 902, carried from the Civil Code of 1825, art. 898 ↩
112. Revised Civil Code of 1870, arts. 903–913 ↩
113. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 914, carried from the Civil Code of 1825, art. 910 ↩
114. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 917, carried from the Civil Code of 1825, art. 911 ↩
115. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 929, carried from the Civil Code of 1825, art. 923 ↩
116. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 924, carried from the Civil Code of 1825, art. 918. Art. 924 was not among the articles amended in the survivor's favor, so this asymmetry stood throughout the period ↩
117. Revised Civil Code of 1870, arts. 930–932 ↩
118. La. Acts 1844, No. 152; La. Acts 1910, No. 57, p. 93; La. Acts 1916, No. 80, p. 201; La. Acts 1920, No. 160, p. 259, the page confirmed in Herold, Interpretations of Civil Code of Louisiana since 1898, at p. 148; La. Acts 1938, No. 408, p. 1008. Each page but the 1920 one is read in the session volume for its year, all cited in the source list. The sequence and the act numbers are confirmed independently in Connell-Thouez, “The New Community of Acquets and Gains in Louisiana,” also in the source list, which lists the same five acts as having gradually improved the survivor’s position under art. 915 ↩
119. Acts Passed by the General Assembly of the State of Louisiana at the Regular Session Begun and Held in the City of Baton Rouge on the Eighth Day of May, 1916 (Baton Rouge, La.: Ramires-Jones Printing Co., 1916), Act No. 80, p. 201, House Bill No. 135, approved 5 July 1916; digital images, HathiTrust (https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=iau.31858018023253 : accessed 5 August 2026). It amends and re-enacts Acts Passed by the General Assembly of the State of Louisiana at the Regular Session Begun and Held in the City of Baton Rouge on the Ninth Day of May, 1910 (Baton Rouge: The New Advocate, Official Journal, 1910), Act No. 57, p. 93, House Bill No. 126, approved 29 June 1910 and promulgated 5 July 1910, which had itself amended and re-enacted art. 915; digital images, HathiTrust (https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=njp.32101042991826 : accessed 5 August 2026). The 1938 act, Acts Passed by the Legislature of the State of Louisiana at the Regular Session Begun and Held in the City of Baton Rouge on the Ninth Day of May, 1938 ([place not stated]: Published by authority of the State, 1938), Act No. 408, p. 1008, House Bill No. 320, headed “Community property; inheritance and distribution,” rewrote the article again within the period covered here; digital images, HathiTrust (https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.b3683181 : accessed 5 August 2026). The amended article is printed in Herold, Interpretations of Civil Code of Louisiana since 1898, at p. 149. The article carried this shape into the 1940s; see La. Civ. Code (Dart, 1945), art. 915, and Leslie Moses, "The Law of Descent and Distribution in Louisiana," 6 Sw. L.J. 81 (1952) ↩
120. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 915 — an article new in the 1870 code, with no 1825 counterpart ↩
121. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 916 — likewise new in 1870; its source is La. Acts 1844, No. 152 ↩
122. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 2382, carried from the Civil Code of 1825, art. 2359 ↩
123. La. Acts 1926, No. 113, amending art. 2382, the act number confirmed in Yiannopoulos, “Testamentary Dispositions in Favor of the Surviving Spouse,” 28 Louisiana Law Review (1968), at n. 5; and see Barrett v. Pierson, 163 La. 541, 112 So. 410 (1927) ↩
124. Revised Civil Code of 1870, arts. 1032, 1054; art. 1032 carried from the Civil Code of 1825, art. 1025 ↩
125. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 977, second paragraph ↩
126. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 1106, carried from the Civil Code of 1825, art. 1098 ↩
127. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 246 ↩
128. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 247, carried from the Civil Code of 1825, art. 264 ↩
129. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 248, carried from the Civil Code of 1825, art. 265 ↩
130. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 249, carried from the Civil Code of 1825, art. 266 ↩
131. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 250, carried from the Civil Code of 1825, art. 268 ↩
132. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 251, carried from the Civil Code of 1825, art. 269 ↩
133. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 253, carried from the Civil Code of 1825, art. 271 ↩
134. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 257, carried from the Civil Code of 1825, art. 276 ↩
135. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 273, carried from the Civil Code of 1825, art. 300 ↩
136. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 274 ↩
137. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 275, carried from the Civil Code of 1825, art. 301 ↩
138. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 202, carried from the Civil Code of 1825, art. 220 ↩
139. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 203, carried from the Civil Code of 1825, art. 221 ↩
140. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 205, carried from the Civil Code of 1825, art. 223 ↩
141. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 204, carried from the Civil Code of 1825, art. 222 ↩
142. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 198, carried from the Civil Code of 1825, art. 217 ↩
143. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 199, carried from the Civil Code of 1825, art. 219 ↩
144. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 200, enacting Act 68 of 1870 ↩
145. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 918, carried from the Civil Code of 1825, art. 912 ↩
146. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 918, second paragraph ↩
147. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 919, carried from the Civil Code of 1825, art. 913 ↩
148. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 919, second paragraph ↩
149. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 920, carried from the Civil Code of 1825, art. 914 ↩
150. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 1488, carried from the Civil Code of 1825, art. 1475 ↩
151. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 1574, carried from the Civil Code of 1825, art. 1567 ↩
152. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 1576, carried from the Civil Code of 1825, art. 1569 ↩
153. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 1578, carried from the Civil Code of 1825, art. 1571 ↩
154. Revised Civil Code of 1870, arts. 1581–1582; art. 1581 carried from the Civil Code of 1825, art. 1574 ↩
155. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 1583, carried from the Civil Code of 1825, art. 1576 ↩
156. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 1584, carried from the Civil Code of 1825, art. 1577 ↩
157. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 1584, and Civil Code of 1825, art. 1577, both requiring seven witnesses to the act of superscription. The number was later reduced to three, and stood at three by the 1940s: see La. Civ. Code (Dart, 1945), art. 1584, and Ronald J. Scalise Jr., "Will Formalities in Louisiana: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow," 80 Louisiana Law Review 1333 (2020). The three-witness rule for proving the testament is now La. Code Civ. Proc. art. 2885 ↩
158. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 1588, carried from the Civil Code of 1825, art. 1581 ↩
159. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 1588 ↩
160. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 1655, carried from the Civil Code of 1825, art. 1648 ↩
161. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 1654 [1647] ↩
162. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 1589, carried from the Civil Code of 1825, art. 1582 ↩
163. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 1476, carried from the Civil Code of 1825, art. 1463 — the minor under sixteen cannot dispose of any property, “save, however, the dispositions contained in the ninth chapter of this title,” that chapter being donations between married persons by marriage contract; the terms on which an unemancipated minor may make one are at arts. 1747–1748 [1740–1741]. Art. 1476 was rewritten by Acts 1991, No. 363, so the modern article no longer states this rule ↩ ↩
164. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 1477, carried from the Civil Code of 1825, art. 1464 ↩
165. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 1478, carried from the Civil Code of 1825, art. 1465 ↩
166. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 1479, carried from the Civil Code of 1825, art. 1466 ↩
167. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 1665, carried from the Civil Code of 1825, art. 1658 ↩
168. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 1663, carried from the Civil Code of 1825, art. 1656 ↩
169. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 1664, carried from the Civil Code of 1825, art. 1657 ↩
170. Revised Civil Code of 1870, arts. 1678–1679; art. 1678 carried from the Civil Code of 1825, art. 1671 ↩
171. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 1591, carried from the Civil Code of 1825, art. 1584, later renumbered art. 1581 (Acts 1997, No. 1421) ↩
172. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 1592, carried from the Civil Code of 1825, art. 1585, later renumbered art. 1582 ↩
173. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 1593, carried from the Civil Code of 1825, art. 1586 ↩
174. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 1594, carried from the Civil Code of 1825, art. 1587 ↩
175. Acts of the Legislative Council of the Territory of Orleans (1805), ch. XXXII, p. 336, "An Act Imposing a Tax on Slaves," approved 19 April 1805 ↩
176. Law Library of Louisiana, "Louisiana's Poll Tax," which lists the poll-tax acts year by year from 1819 forward with links to the digitized session volumes (https://lasc.libguides.com/Louisiana-poll-tax : accessed 9 August 2026). The earliest acts listed are those of 1819, 1821, and 1823, and the run continues through 1924 ↩
177. La. Acts 1855, No. 346, An Act to provide a Revenue, and the manner of collecting the same, approved 15 March 1855, sec. 3, first item, at p. 503, levying one dollar a year on each free white male inhabitant over the age of twenty-one not attached to the army or navy of the United States, appropriated exclusively to the free public schools of the parish where paid; digital images, HathiTrust (https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.a0001909811&seq=1016 : examined 11 August 2026). And La. Acts 1850, No. 194, An Act to provide for the assessment and collection of taxes in this State, approved 21 March 1850, sec. 59, at p. 143, requiring collectors of State taxes to report the poll tax separately from the taxes on lands and slaves and from taxes levied for school purposes; digital images, HathiTrust (https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.a0001909779&seq=290 : examined 11 August 2026). Both acts are indexed in Law Library of Louisiana, "Louisiana's Poll Tax" (https://lasc.libguides.com/Louisiana-poll-tax : accessed 11 August 2026), which flags sec. 68 of the 1855 act and sec. 59 of the 1850 act; those are the collectors' return provisions, while the levy itself is at sec. 3 of the 1855 act. Earlier poll taxes came by town charter rather than by general law — the charter of New Iberia in 1855, for one, let the town tax white male persons above twenty-one, at p. 200 of the same volume ↩
178. Louisiana Constitution of 1868, art. 118, directing the General Assembly to levy a poll tax on all male inhabitants of the State over twenty-one years old, for school and charitable purposes, never to exceed one dollar and fifty cents a year; reprinted in Law Library of Louisiana, "Louisiana's Poll Tax" (https://lasc.libguides.com/Louisiana-poll-tax : accessed 11 August 2026). The levy was carried out by La. Acts 1868, No. 196, An Act to provide a Revenue for the Support of the State Government, and the manner of collecting the same, approved 21 October 1868, sec. 3, first item, at p. 248, which repeats the sentence used in the act of 1855 word for word except that the words "free white" are gone; digital images, HathiTrust (https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=pst.000018406122&seq=260 : examined 11 August 2026) ↩
179. Louisiana Constitution of 1868, art. 141, appropriating half the poll-tax proceeds to the free public schools; printed in Constitution Adopted by the State Constitutional Convention of the State of Louisiana, March 7, 1868 (New Orleans: Printed at the Republican Office, 1868); digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/constitutionadop00loui : accessed 26 July 2026) ↩
180. Louisiana Constitution of 1879, art. 208, requiring an annual poll tax for the maintenance of public schools upon every male inhabitant over the age of twenty-one, never less than one dollar nor more than one dollar and a half; and art. 227, applying the proceeds exclusively to the schools of the parish in which collected; both reprinted in Law Library of Louisiana, "Louisiana's Poll Tax" (https://lasc.libguides.com/Louisiana-poll-tax : accessed 11 August 2026). The levy was carried out by La. Acts 1880, No. 120, p. 152, "An Act To levy an annual poll tax and to provide for the collection of the same," approved 10 April 1880 ↩
181. Louisiana Constitution of 1898, art. 231, requiring an annual poll tax of one dollar on every male inhabitant between twenty-one and sixty for the support of the public schools; text and article numbers from Law Library of Louisiana, "Louisiana's Poll Tax" (https://lasc.libguides.com/Louisiana-poll-tax : accessed 9 August 2026), which reprints the suffrage and poll-tax articles of each constitution ↩
182. Louisiana Constitution of 1921, art. VIII, § 2, imposing the poll tax "on every resident of this State between the ages of twenty-one and sixty years" and dropping the word male used in art. 198 of the Constitution of 1898; the two texts are printed side by side in Law Library of Louisiana, "Louisiana's Poll Tax" (https://lasc.libguides.com/Louisiana-poll-tax : accessed 9 August 2026) ↩
183. Louisiana Constitution of 1898, art. 198, excepting from the poll-tax requirement persons who were deaf and unable to speak, persons who were blind, and persons under twenty-three years of age who had paid all poll taxes assessed against them; Louisiana Constitution of 1921, art. VIII, § 2, carrying the same exceptions forward and adding citizens of the State in the military or naval service of the United States in time of war; both reprinted in Law Library of Louisiana, "Louisiana's Poll Tax" (https://lasc.libguides.com/Louisiana-poll-tax : accessed 11 August 2026) ↩
184. La. Acts 1882, No. 66, p. 86, requiring the tax collectors throughout the State to render to the school board of their parish a schedule list, by wards, of all persons subject to the payment of a poll tax by the first Saturday in October each year, and to return a list of all the polls by wards showing those who had paid and those delinquent by the first Saturday in February, approved 30 June 1882; indexed in Law Library of Louisiana, "Louisiana's Poll Tax" (https://lasc.libguides.com/Louisiana-poll-tax : accessed 11 August 2026) ↩
185. La. Acts 1888, No. 89, p. 149, moving the October schedule list to the assessors in their respective parishes and leaving the February return of those who had paid and those delinquent to the sheriff and tax collector, approved 12 July 1888; indexed in Law Library of Louisiana, "Louisiana's Poll Tax" (https://lasc.libguides.com/Louisiana-poll-tax : accessed 11 August 2026) ↩
186. La. Acts 1894, No. 56, p. 65, vesting the collection of poll taxes for the parish of Orleans in the treasurer of the City of New Orleans, approved 5 July 1894; indexed in Law Library of Louisiana, "Louisiana's Poll Tax" (https://lasc.libguides.com/Louisiana-poll-tax : accessed 11 August 2026) ↩
187. Louisiana Constitution of 1898, art. 198, making payment of the poll tax for the two preceding years a condition of voting for anyone under sixty, and providing that the article should not go into operation until after the general State election of 1900; reprinted in Law Library of Louisiana, "Louisiana's Poll Tax" (https://lasc.libguides.com/Louisiana-poll-tax : accessed 9 August 2026) ↩
188. La. Acts 1934, No. 230, p. 710, a joint resolution proposing an amendment to sections 2 and 3 of article VIII of the Constitution of Louisiana relative to the qualifications of electors, approved by the Governor 14 July 1934 ↩
189. La. Acts 1940, No. 374, p. 1409, a joint resolution proposing a further amendment to sections 2 and 3 of article VIII relative to the qualifications of electors ↩
190. Marr, An Annotated Index of the Acts of the Legislature of Louisiana: Through the Session of 1894, 2nd ed. (New Orleans: F. F. Hansell & Bro., 1895), s.v. "Juries," indexing each jury act by number, year, and page; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/anannotatedinde00marrgoog : accessed 4 August 2026). On the opening of jury service after the Civil War see Louisiana Constitution of 1868 and the federal Civil Rights Act of 1866, 14 Stat. 27 ↩
191. Act 135 of 1898, p. 216, § 1, “An Act relative to Juries in and for the State of Louisiana, the Parish of Orleans excepted … to prescribe the qualifications of grand and petit jurors.” The page is given in Wolff, Constitution and Statutes of Louisiana, vol. 2 ↩
192. Act 135 of 1898, § 1 ↩
193. Act 135 of 1898, § 1 ↩
194. Act 135 of 1898, p. 216, § 4, the Orleans Parish jury commission provisions; the section is printed in Wolff, Constitution and Statutes of Louisiana, vol. 2; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/constitutionand00wolfgoog : accessed 26 July 2026) ↩
195. Act 135 of 1898, § 1 ↩
196. Louisiana Constitution of 1921, art. VII, § 41; La. Acts 1928, No. 2 (Code of Criminal Procedure), art. 172, later renumbered art. 402; repealed effective 1 January 1975 after Taylor v. Louisiana, 419 U.S. 522 (1975). And see Law Library of Louisiana, "A Brief History of Women Serving on Juries" (https://lasc.libguides.com/c.php?g=455842 : accessed 26 July 2026) ↩
197. Act 82 of 1906, p. 134 (Senate Bill No. 51), amending the Constitution of 1898 and establishing juvenile jurisdiction over offenders under sixteen. An earlier act on the same subject, Act 136 of 1902, p. 237, is listed in the 1920 compilation; the sequence of juvenile-court acts is set out in Law Library of Louisiana, "A Brief History of the Louisiana Juvenile Courts" (https://lasc.libguides.com/c.php?g=484864 : accessed 26 July 2026) ↩
198. Act 83 of 1908, p. 96 (Senate Bill No. 49), approved by the electors as a constitutional amendment in November 1908 ↩
199. Act 48 of 1910, p. 72; Act 135 of 1910, submitting the change as a constitutional amendment, approved by the electors in November 1910 ↩
200. Louisiana Constitution of 1921, art. VII, § 52. The 1921 constitution is printed in the front matter of the Louisiana session-law volumes of the period; its juvenile-court and jury provisions are summarized in Law Library of Louisiana, "A Brief History of the Louisiana Juvenile Courts" (https://lasc.libguides.com/c.php?g=484864 : accessed 26 July 2026) ↩
201. Act 119 of 1922, p. 244, Senate Bill No. 111, creating a juvenile court for the Parish of Caddo, approved 13 July 1922; read in Acts Passed by the Legislature of the State of Louisiana, 1922, digital images, HathiTrust (https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=iau.31858018023352 : accessed 5 August 2026) ↩
202. La. Acts 1942, No. 43, p. 137; now La. R.S. 14:13 ↩
203. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 2281, carried from the Civil Code of 1825, art. 2260 ↩
204. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 2282, carried from the Civil Code of 1825, art. 2261 ↩
205. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 2283, carried from the Civil Code of 1825, art. 2262 ↩
206. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 2281 ↩
207. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 1591 ↩
208. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 2234 ↩
209. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 1110 ↩
210. Revised Civil Code of 1870, art. 25, carried from the Civil Code of 1825, art. 25; and see art. 24 ↩

Note: This law guide was created with assistance from multiple AI tools. Though a diligent effort was made to ensure the accuracy of the information provided, there may be unintentional errors. It's important to check the primary sources as needed to ensure accuracy.