Adopt

2 To choose: take, receive, accept.

Whence adoption.

1.

To make as one's own what formerly was not so; to appropriate: as, to adopt a symbol or design for a trade-mark, q, v. 2. To assent to what affects one's right; to approve, ratify: as, to adopt the unauthorized act of an agent; to adopt a by-law, a charter, a constitution, an amendment. To " adopt " a route for the transportation of the mails is to take the steps necessary to cause the mail to be tnansported over that route. ^ 3. To take a strange): into one's family as son and heir; to accept the child of another as one's own child and heir.< " Adopted child " and "adopted parent" are correlative expressions. "Adopting parent" and (but less frequently) " adopter " are also used. Adoption, in this sense, is regulated by statute in' each State. The child becomes in a legal sense the child of the adopted parent. At the same time it remains the child of its natural parents, and is "not deprived of the right of inheriting from them, unless expressly so provided by statute.^ In the Eoman law adoption was an act by which a person undertook to rear the child of another and appoint such child as his heir. Some special authority of law was necessary to constitute the relation. No right to adopt a child exists at common law. The methods known in modern law are by a decree of a competent court and by indenture.^ Adoption was unknown to the common law, butwas recognized in the civil law from its earliest days. The effect was to make a stranger the son and heir of the adoptmg person. The stranger entered the family and came under the power of its head; he became as a child, and his children as grandchildren, of the adopter. Under the Spanish law as it existed while Texas was part ot Mexico, no person having a legitimate child living could adopt a stranger as co-heir with his child. The statute law of that State has imported the civil law, modified in important respects. It gives the adopted party the position of a child so Co., 144 Mass. 160 (1887) — declaration by conductor of a street car.

1 L. ad-monere, to advise. 2 L. adoptare, to choose. 3 Ehodes v. United States, 1 Dev. 47 (1856). <See Vidal v. Commagere, 13 La. An. 157 (1858): Webster. ^ Wagner v. Varner, 50 Iowa, 531 (1879).

See, as to inheriting lands in another State or country, Ross v. Eoss, 129 Mass. 245-68 (1880), cases. far as to make Win an heir, but does not make him a member of the adopter's family. It allows him to inherit, to an extent, along with legitimate children."