Not only natural children are subject, as we said, to paternal power,
but also adoptive children.
1 Adoption is of two forms, being effected either by rescript of the
Emperor, or by the judicial authority of a magistrate. The first is the
mode in which we adopt independent persons, and this form of adoption
is called adrogation: the second is the mode in which we adopt a person
subject to the power of an ascendant, whether a descendant in the first
degree, as a son or daughter, or in a remoter degree, as a grandson,
granddaughter, great-grandson, or great-granddaughter.
2 But by the law, as now settled by our constitution, when a child in
power is given in adoption to a stranger by his natural father, the
power of the latter is not extinguished; no right passes to the adoptive
father, nor is the person adopted in his power, though we have given a
right of succession in case of the adoptive father dying intestate.
But if the person to whom the child is given in adoption by its natural
father is not a stranger, but the child's own maternal grandfather, or,
supposing the father to have been emancipated, its paternal grandfather,
or its great-grandfather paternal or maternal, in this case, because the
rights given by nature and those given by adoption are vested in one
and the same person, the old power of the adoptive father is left
unimpaired, the strength of the natural bond of blood being augmented by
the civil one of adoption, so that the child is in the family and
power of an adoptive father, between whom and himself there existed
antecedently the relationship described.
3 When a child under the age of puberty is adopted by rescript of
the Emperor, the adrogation is only permitted after cause shown, the
goodness of the motive and the expediency of the step for the pupil
being inquired into. The adrogation is also made under certain
conditions; that is to say, the adrogator has to give security to a
public agent or attorney of the people, that if the pupil should die
within the age of puberty, he will return his property to the persons
who would have succeeded him had no adoption taken place. The adoptive
father again may not emancipate them unless upon inquiry they are found
deserving of emancipation, or without restoring them their property.
Finally, if he disinherits him at death, or emancipates him in his
lifetime without just cause, he is obliged to leave him a fourth of
his own property, besides that which he brought him when adopted, or by
subsequent acquisition.
4 It is settled that a man cannot adopt another person older than
himself, for adoption imitates nature, and it would be unnatural for a
son to be older than his father. Consequently a man who desires either
to adopt or to adrogate a son ought to be older than the latter by the
full term of puberty, or eighteen years.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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