The church prescribed rules for sexual behaviour and they applied equally to all Christians, without distinction between Estonians and Germans, townsfolk and countryfolk, free persons and serfs. Sexual relations were permitted only within marriage. The church and the state authorities, which operated hand in hand with the church, not only condemned premarital and extramarital intercourse, but also punished offenders for such transgressions. Intimate relations that transcended the boundaries of class and nationality were brought before the court for primarily two reasons: either an illegitimate child was born from such intercourse, or such relations provided grounds for initiating divorce proceedings.

In 1723–1725, the Tartu Landgericht (county court) and the Riga Hofgericht (court of appeal) deliberated the adultery committed by Carl Gustav von Orfeld, the lord of Reola Manor in Tartu County, with a maid serving at his manor and with a married peasant woman. While the former relation was consensual, which the maid admittedly tried to present in a different light before the court, the latter incident was a case of sexual violence. Although the manor lord denied it, the court found Orfeld guilty and sentenced him to death. His marriage was divorced.

The bringing of false charges against manor lords also indicates that peasants could bring action in regard to violence that had been perpetrated against them. We also find consensual relations or those that tend towards prostitution. Those Germans who established intimate relations with Estonians were prevailingly not nobles but rather manor servants and artisans belonging to the lower classes. Unlike sexual relations, marriages that transcended the boundaries of class and nationality were very rare.

The interrogation files of unmarried mothers are not particularly reliable. The relative proportion of Germans named as fathers of illegitimate children is statistically quite large – about one fifth, but Germans were often falsely reported as the fathers of illegitimate children as a means for sparing the actual peasant father from punishment. In most cases, the named Germans had already left the locality and were beyond the reach of the court.

In considering sexual relations between Estonians and Germans, ius primae noctis (right of the first night) cannot be ignored. If ius primae noctis had really existed, it would have completely contradicted the norms of that time, which had been established by both the church and the state. It was not only the legal order of that time that ruled out ius primae noctis in 18th-century Livland. It was also ruled out by the fact that a large proportion of Estonian brides had already had their ‘first night’ before reaching the altar.