In Roman law, the term bonus pater familias ("good family father") refers to a standard of care, analogous to that of the reasonable man in the common law.^[1]

This article needs additional citations for verification. (April 2016)

You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in Danish. (November 2015) Click [show] for important translation instructions. View a machine-translated version of the Danish article. Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing Danish Wikipedia article at [[:da:Bonus pater familias]]; see its history for attribution. You should also add the template {{Translated|da|Bonus pater familias}} to the talk page. For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.

In Spanish law, the term used is a direct translation ("un buen padre de familia"), and used in the Spanish Código Civil.^[2] It is also used in Latin American countries.^[3]

In Portuguese law the term is also mentioned in the Civil Code, in its direct translation ("um bom pai de família").

In Italian law, the term is used in a direct translation ("<diligenza del> buon padre di famiglia").

Similar is the French language expression bon père de famille, used in a sense similar to "reasonably cautious person." For example, in the case of Fales v. Canada Permanent Trust Co., [1977] 2 SCR 302, at p. 315, the Supreme Court of Canada described the standard of care and diligence expected of the manager of a trust as being "ceux qu’un bon père de famille apporte à l’administration de ses propres affaires".^[4] In the English version of the decision, this concept was translated as "that of a man of ordinary prudence in managing his own affairs."^[5]