Legitimacy and Inheritance Rights of Children Born to Man with Perforated Member

Description

A wealthy man with a reportedly perforated male member — incapable of fathering children — died leaving an estate to his son and an expected child; the community questioned whether the children were mamzerim and entitled to inherit. The Chasam Sofer rules decisively that the children retain their presumption of legitimacy: the doctor's statement was not formal testimony and cannot be verified, the post-mortem findings do not prove the condition existed at conception, and the mother's reputation does not rise to the evidentiary threshold required to establish mamzeirus. The children therefore inherit their father's estate in full.