Merely relying on a copy of a contract could change a person's status. Or was there any difference in land leased based on status and contract?
Parents' parental rights over their children were innate. Under German law, as long as the parents had not divorced and were merely legally separated, both still retained parental rights. Once they divorced, however, those rights might be transferred.
According to Roman Law, the parents' interests took priority, whereas the Germanic peoples valued the child's interests. When a father needed an heir and the mother was unable to raise a child, the father could seek the mother's consent to transfer parental rights over the child to him.
However, in most divorce cases, parents fought over custody of their children. Some fathers were unwilling to take on guardianship duties, though they acknowledged the child was theirs; they simply could not raise the child because they spent all year away from home. In that case, the mother kept the child and accepted child support from him. When the mother remarried, she and the child no longer had parental rights, but she still had the duty to act as guardian and care for the child.
She had given birth to that child, so naturally she would "forever" be the child's mother. But this involved another person: her new husband, or rather, the child's stepfather.
The essence of marriage lay in the legal union of a man and a woman for the purpose of living together.
Such a relationship had to rest on a mutual basis. When one party demanded total submission while promising nothing equivalent in return, it constituted an "abuse" of the purpose of shared life and violated the principle of respect.
A stepfather and his stepchildren had no blood relationship, and before marrying his current wife,