The same statute of the Twelve Tables assigns the guardianship of
freedmen and freedwomen to the patron and his children, and this
guardianship, like that of agnates, is called statutory guardianship;
not that it is anywhere expressly enacted in that statute, but because
its interpretation by the jurists has procured for it as much reception
as it could have obtained from express enactment: the fact that the
inheritance of a freedman or freedwoman, when they die intestate, was
given by the statute to the patron and his children, being deemed a
proof that they were intended to have the guardianship also, partly
because in dealing with agnates the statute coupled guardianship with
succession, and partly on the principle that where the advantage of
the succession is, there, as a rule, ought too to be the burden of the
guardianship. We say 'as a rule,' because if a slave below the age of
puberty is manumitted by a woman, though she is entitled, as patroness,
to the succession, another person is guardian.
TITLE XVIII. OF THE STATUTORY GUARDIANSHIP OF PARENTS
The analogy of the patron guardian led to another kind of socalled
statutory guardianship, namely that of a parent over a son or daughter,
or a grandson or granddaughter by a son, or any other descendant through
males, whom he emancipates below the age of puberty: in which case he
will be statutory guardian.
TITLE XIX. OF FIDUCIARY GUARDIANSHIP
There is another kind of guardianship known as fiduciary guardianship,
which arises in the following manner. If a parent emancipates a son or
daughter, a grandson or granddaughter, or other descendant while under
the age of puberty, he becomes their statutory guardian: but if at his
death he leaves male children, they become fiduciary guardians of their
own sons, or brothers and sisters, or other relatives who had been thus
emancipated. But on the decease of a patron who is statutory guardian
his children become statutory guardians also; for a son of a deceased
person, supposing him not to have been emancipated during his father's
lifetime, becomes independent at the latter's death, and does not
fall under the power of his brothers, nor, consequently, under their
guardianship; whereas a freedman, had he remained a slave, would at
his master's death have become the slave of the latter's children. The
guardianship, however, is not cast on these persons unless they are of
full age, which indeed has been made a general rule in guardianship and
curatorship of every kind by our constitution.
TITLE XX. OF ATILIAN GUARDIANS, AND THOSE APPOINTED UNDER THE LEX IULIA
ET TITIA
Failing every other kind of guardian, at Rome one used to be appointed
under the lex Atilia by the praetor of the city and the majority of the
tribunes of the people; in the provinces one was appointed under the lex
Iulia et Titia by the president of the province.
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