21 MARCKX v. BELGIUM JUDGMENT one that usually serves to establish legal ties between one individual and another’s child; to oblige in practice an unmarried mother to utilise such a procedure if she wishes to improve her own daughter’s situation as regards patrimonial rights amounts to disregarding the tie of blood and to using the institution of adoption for an extraneous purpose. Besides, the procedure to be followed is somewhat lengthy and complicated. Above all, the child is left entirely at the mercy of his parent’s initiative, for he is unable to apply to the courts for his adoption. 56. Unlike a "legitimate" child, Alexandra has at no time before or after 30 October 1974 had any entitlement on intestacy in the estates of members of Paula Marckx’s family (see paragraph 49 above). Here again, the Court fails to find any objective and reasonable justification. In the Government’s submission, the reason why adoption in principle confers on the adopted child no patrimonial rights as regards relatives of the adopter is that the relatives may not have approved of the adoption. The Court does not have to decide this point in the present proceedings since it considers discriminatory the need for a mother to adopt her child (see paragraph 55 above). 57. As regards the sum total of the patrimonial rights claimed by the second applicant, the Court notes that the Bill submitted to the Senate on 15 February 1978 (see paragraph 21 above) advocates, in the name of the principle of equality, "the abolition of the inferior status characterising, in matters of inheritance, the lot of illegitimate children" as compared with children born in wedlock. 58. The Government also state that they appreciate that an increase in the "illegitimate" child’s inheritance rights is considered indispensable; however, in their view, reform should be effected by legislation and without retrospective effect. Their argument runs as follows: if the Court were to find certain rules of Belgian law to be incompatible with the Convention, this would mean that these rules had been contrary to the Convention since its entry into force in respect of Belgium (14 June 1955); the only way to escape such a conclusion would be to accept that the Convention’s requirements had increased in the intervening period and to indicate the exact date of the change; failing this, the result of the judgment would be to render many subsequent distributions of estates irregular and open to challenge before the courts, since the limitation period on the two actions available under Belgian law in this connection is thirty years. The Court is not required to undertake an examination in abstracto of the legislative provisions complained of: it is enquiring whether or not their application to Paula and Alexandra Marckx complies with the Convention (see paragraph 27 above). Admittedly, it is inevitable that the Court’s decision will have effects extending beyond the confines of this particular case, especially since the violations found stem directly from the contested provisions and not from individual measures of implementation, but the