Yes. A child born of a void marriage inherits from both parents on the same footing as a child of a valid one.
The Statute Makes the Child an Heir
OCGA 19-3-5(a) makes marriages of “persons unable to contract, unwilling to contract, or fraudulently induced to contract” void, and then adds that “the issue of such a marriage born before the marriage is annulled and declared void by a competent court shall be legitimate.”
That matters because a legitimate child is an heir at law. The child of a bigamous or otherwise void marriage does not have to establish paternity the way a child born outside any marriage does, and nothing has to be filed to make it so. The status comes with the birth.
An Equal Share, Not a Reduced One
In Griffin v. Booth, 176 Ga. 1 (1932), Walton Harmon went through a marriage ceremony with a second woman and lived with her for years without ever having divorced his first wife. The Supreme Court of Georgia held that Jesse, the son of that void second marriage, was an heir at law of Walton Harmon, because “the offspring of such a marriage will be considered legitimate until such marriage is declared null and void and set aside.”
The Court then directed that the property be “distributed into three equal parts among the heirs at law of Walton Harmon” – the first wife, her son, and Jesse. The child of the void marriage took the same share as the child of the valid one.
Timing Is the Limit
The protection runs to a child born before a court annuls the marriage and declares it void. A child conceived afterward is outside the statute, so the date of the decree, not the date the parents learned the marriage was bad, is what fixes the child’s inheritance rights.
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This post is a quick overview of the law and is not intended as legal advice. Please feel free to contact our office for a consultation if you have questions about this or any other legal aspects regarding your case!