2 Children fully adopted, in accordance with the distinction drawn in
our constitution, can bring this action as well as natural children, but
neither can do so unless there is no other mode in which they can obtain
the property of the deceased: for those who can obtain the inheritance
wholly or in part by any other title are barred from attacking a will as
unduteous. Afterborn children too can employ this remedy, if they can by
no other means recover the inheritance.
3 That they may bring the action must be understood to mean, that
they may bring it only if absolutely nothing has been left them by the
testator in his will: a restriction introduced by our constitution out
of respect for a father's natural rights. If, however, a part of the
inheritance, however small, or even a single thing is left them, the
will cannot be impeached, but the heir must, if necessary, make up what
is given them to a fourth of what they would have taken had the testator
died intestate, even though the will does not direct that this fourth is
to be made up by the assessment of an honest and reliable man.
4 If a guardian accepts, under his own father's will, a legacy on behalf
of the pupil under his charge, the father having left nothing to him
personally, he is in no way debarred from impeaching his father's will
as unduteous on his own account.
5 On the other hand, if he impeaches the will of his pupil's father on
the pupil's behalf, because nothing has been left to the latter, and is
defeated in the action, he does not lose a legacy given in the same will
to himself personally.
6 Accordingly, that a person may be barred from the action impeaching
the will, it is requisite that he should have a fourth of what he would
have taken on intestacy, either as heir, legatee direct or fiduciary,
donee in contemplation of death, by gift from the testator in his
lifetime (though gift of this latter kind bars the action only if made
under any of the circumstances mentioned in our constitution) or in any
of the other modes stated in the imperial legislation.
7 In what we have said of the fourth we must be understood to mean that
whether there be one person only, or more than one, who can impeach the
will as unduteous, onefourth of the whole inheritance may be given them,
to be divided among them all proportionately, that is to say, to each
person a fourth of what he would have had if the testator had died
intestate.
TITLE XIX. OF THE KINDS AND DIFFERENCES BETWEEN HEIRS
Heirs are of three kinds, that is to say, they are either necessary,
family heirs and necessary, or external.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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