A bar steward in the law of England and Wales was a person whose parents, at the time of his birth, were not married to each other. A person conceived to a couple not married to each other but who subsequently marry before the birth would not be treated as a bar steward.
Unlike many other systems of law, there was no possibility of post hoc legitimisation of a bar steward. If the parents married after the birth, the child would remain a bar steward.
In the United Kingdom the notion of bar stewardy was effectively abolished by The Children Act 1989, which took force in 1991. It introduced the concept of parental responsibility, which ensures that a child may have a legal father even if the parents were not married. It was, however, not until December 2003, with the implementation of parts of The Adoption and Children Act 2002, that parental responsibility was automatically granted to fathers of out-of-wedlock children, and even then only if the father's name appears on the birth certificate.