Adoption in Europe

Definition of Adoption

There are 2 meanings:

• Adoption of a contract. The acceptance of it as binding, notwithstanding some defect which entitles the party to repudiate it.
• Adoption of a children.

See Adoption in the legal Dictionaries.

History

In Ancient Grece and Rome

Accourding to the Cambridge Dictionary of Classical Civilization:

“In ancient Greece, adoption provided someone to inherit property in the absence of sons. People did not adopt simply because they wanted a FAMILY, or to give orphaned children a home. In Athens it was illegal to adopt foundlings, since they might not be of citizen birth. Childless men usually adopted male adults, who were frequently close relatives. Women and children were only rarely adopted (Isaios 11). In Athens a man who had daughters, but no sons, might adopt a son to marry his daughter (Demosthenes 41). Alternatively, a grandfather might adopt his daughter’s son, sometimes posthumously. An adopted son inherited the estate of his adoptive father, but forfeited the right to inherit from his biological father.

Provisional adoption was sometimes incorporated in WILLS, so that the adoption only happened if the testator died childless. Men about to go off to fight in battle regularly made such wills, since they could not be certain of returning alive. A large estate with no obvious heir was likely to become the subject of dispute. Even the rights of an adopted son might be contested, and the lawsuits could last many years.

Our main sources for adoption are the courtroom speeches of 4th-century BC Athens and the Great Law Code of GORTYN, CRETE (early 5th century BC). Despite differences of detail, the general principles are similar in both, suggesting that Greek concepts of adoption were deeply rooted and closely linked to INHERITANCE.

For the childless man – married or unmarried – adoption provided a means of perpetuating his family name and cult. It was possible to adopt someone posthumously, in a WILL (e.g. the younger PLINY). The law distinguished between adoptio of a boy or man still in his father’s power and adrogatio of a man with a family in his own power, whose whole family would transfer legally to that of the adopter. The middle (gentile) Roman name was changed to that of the adoptive father but the original gentile name, in extended form, replaced the third name (cognomen) – thus Publius Aemilius Paullus, adopted by Publius Cornelius SCIPIO AFRICANUS, became Publius Cornelius Aemilianus. Adoptees, who were usually adults and often relatives, relinquished legal claims (such as INHERITANCE) to the family of their birth but still maintained relations with them. Many adoptions transferred the son of a daughter or sister from the female to the male line. A female Roman citizen could be adopted but could not adopt. She could establish quasi-maternal relations by naming a favourite as heir in her will, or by rearing a poor relative or social inferior (an alumnus or alumna) who would care for her in old age and perform her funeral rites. Romans could therefore extend kinship and emotional relationships without fictions of biological parenthood or secrecy.”

In Great Britain

Prior to the Adoption of Children Act, 1926 (16 & 17 Geo. 5, c. 29), the institution of adoption was unknown to English law. By that Act the High Court, the County Court, and a Court of Summary Jurisdiction is empowered on the application of any person desirous of adopting an infant who has never been married, to make an adoption order with the consent of the infant’s parents or guardians (if any). Such order extinguishes the rights, duties, obligations and liabilities of parents or guardians of an adopted child as to its custody, maintenance and education, including the right to consent or dissent to its marriage, and vests them in the adopter, as though the adopted child had been born in wedlock to the adopter. The adopted child assumes the liability of a lawful child as to maintaining its parents, with regard to its adopted parents, and two spouses stand to an adopted child as its lawful father and mother. An applicant for an adoption order must not be under t wen ty-five” years of age and must not be less than twenty-one years older than the infant, unless they are within the prohibited degrees of consanguinity.

Except in special cases, a sole male person cannot adopt a female infant. An Adopted Children’s Register will be established by the Registrar-General. [1]

Adoption in other legal encyclopedias

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Resources

Notes

1. Definition and descripito of Adoption from A Concise Law Dictionary (1927).

Further Reading

• Crook, J. A. (1967) Law and Life of Rome.
• Rubinstein, L. (1993) Adoption in IV. Century Athens.