Threats to resort to law are extremely common. In argument villagers normally speak of the law as the source of all land rights, and of the courts as the source of justice. The imperfections in the Code, and in the judicial process, have not apparently undermined the respect for Law. Occasionally, when the stake is high or when the parties are more interested in victory over enemies than in economic advantage, villagers do go to law, and cases of this kind are sufficient to clog the national machine and keep it permanently in arrears. But in most cases the threats are idle, and only a tiny percentage of land disputes actually reach the courts.
Because of the total lack of village interest in official registration of marriage - less than half of all marriages were registered (Timur (1957) p.35) - many respectably born village children are legally illegitimate. Special laws have, from time to time rendered the legitimisation of such children extremely simple but many village wives remain without legal claims on their husbands or on their husbands' estates. In practice, so far, because the villages have recourse to law so seldom, the illegitimacy of many wives and widows has no consequences that I could discover.