TITLE X. OF ACQUISITION BY ADROGATION
There is another kind of universal succession which owes its introduction neither to the statute of the Twelve Tables nor to the praetor's Edict, but to the law which is based upon custom and consent.
1 When an independent person gives himself in adrogation, all his property, corporeal and incorporeal, and all debts due to him formerly passed in full ownership to the adrogator, except such rights as are extinguished by loss of status, for instance, bounden services of freedmen and rights of agnation. Use and usufruct, though formerly enumerated among such rights, have now been saved by our constitution from extinction by the least loss of status.
2 But we have now confined acquisition by adrogation within the same limits as acquisition through their children by natural parents; that is to say, adoptive as well as natural parents acquire no greater right in property which comes to children in their power from any extraneous source than a mere usufruct; the ownership is vested in the children themselves. But if a son who has been adrogated dies in his adoptive family, the whole of his property vests in the adrogator, failing those persons who, under our constitution, are preferred to the father in succession to property which is not acquired immediately from him.
3 Conversely, the adrogator is not, by strict law, suable for the debts of his adoptive son, but an action may be brought against him as his representative; and if he declines to defend the latter, the creditors are allowed, by an order of the magistrates having jurisdiction in such cases, to take possession of the property of which the usufruct as well as the ownership would have belonged to the son, had he not subjected himself to the power of another, and to dispose of it in the mode prescribed by law.
TITLE XI. OF THE ADJUDICATION OF A DECEASED PERSON'S ESTATE TO PRESERVE THE GIFTS OF LIBERTY
A new form of succession was added by a constitution of the Emperor Marcus, which provided that if slaves, who have received a bequest of liberty from their master in a will under which no heir takes, wish to have his property adjudged to them, their application shall be entertained.
1 Such is the substance of a rescript addressed by the Emperor Marcus to Popilius Rufus, which runs as follows: 'If there is no successor to take on the intestacy of Virginius Valens, who by his will has conferred freedom on certain of his slaves, and if, consequently, his property is in danger of being sold, the magistrate who has cognizance of such matters shall on application entertain your desire to have the property adjudged to you, in order to give effect to the bequests of liberty, direct and fiduciary, provided you give proper security to the creditors for payment of their claims in full. Slaves to whom liberty has been directly bequeathed shall become free exactly as if the inheritance had been actually accepted, and those whom the heir was requested to manumit shall obtain their liberty from you; provided that if you will have the property adjudged to you only upon the condition, that even the slaves who have received a direct bequest of liberty shall become your freedmen, and if they, whose status is now in question, agree to this, we are ready to authorize compliance with your wishes. And lest the benefit afforded by this our rescript be rendered ineffectual in another way, by the Treasury laying claim to the property, be it hereby known to those engaged in our service that the cause of liberty is to be preferred to pecuniary advantage, and that they must so effect such seizures as to preserve the freedom of those who could have obtained it had the inheritance been accepted under the will.'