Power v. Hafley

• Decision Date: 02 June 1887
• Parties: POWER and others v. HAFLEY and others.
• Court: Kentucky Court of Appeals

4 S.W. 683

85 Ky. 671

POWER and others v. HAFLEY and others.

Court of Appeals of Kentucky.

June 2, 1887

Appeal from circuit court, Casey county.

Harrison & Belden and Lewis Edelen, for appellants.

Geo Denny, Jr., for appellees.

BENNETT J.

In 1842, Frederick Hafley, being desirous of adopting Sylvania Floyd, his infant sister-in-law, who was living with him as a member of his family, induced the legislature of this state to pass an act which reads as follows: "Whereas, it is represented to the present general assembly of the common wealth of Kentucky that Frederick Hafley, a citizen of Casey county, is desirous of having the name of Sylvania Floyd, a girl now living in his family, changed to that of Sylvania Hafley, and that said Sylvania should be adopted as his legal heir, and take his estate by descent as though she had been his lawful child, therefore be it enacted by the general assembly of the commonwealth of Kentucky that the name of the said Sylvania Floyd be, and the same is hereby, changed to that of Sylvania Hafley, by which name she shall hereafter be styled and known; and that she may be capable of taking and holding by descent, the estate of said Frederick Hafley real, personal, and mixed, in as full and complete a manner as if she was his lawful child. Approved January 22 1842."

Sylvania Hafley, after her adoption, married ________ Power. Several years after said marriage she died leaving children, the appellants. After her death, Frederick Hafley died intestate. The appellants, as the children of Sylvania, claim the estate of Frederick Hafley as his legal representatives; and as such brought suit in equity in the Casey county circuit court for the purpose of establishing their right to Hafley's estate, and having same divided among themselves. The appellee Cynthia Hafley, the widow of Frederick Hafley resisted the appellants' right to the estate, and demurred to their petition upon the ground that appellants had no right to the estate. The lower court sustained the demurrer, and dismissed the petition.

The contention of the appellees is that, Sylvania Power having died before her adoptive father died, her children could not inherit his property, because her relation to the adoptive father, and her right to inherit his estate as his adopted daughter, being purely personal, the right died with her. In other words, the relation of adopting father and adopted daughter, which existed between Frederick Hafley and Sylvania, was a purely legal relation, which was personal in its character, and that Sylvania's right to inherit his estate by virtue of that relation depended upon her surviving him; and, she having died beford he did, the legal relationship was wholly dissolved, and her children, therefore, could not inherit from the adoptive father in her stead.

The common law made no provision for adopting children. Hence we get no light from that law to guide us in the present investigation. Most of the states of the Union have within the last few years enacted general laws providing for the adoption of children, and making them the legal heirs of the adopting parents through the courts. Of course, the laws of these states are not uniform in substance; the laws of each more or less limit and restrict the legal status of the adopting parent and the adopted child; and, while the reported adjudications of these states construing the adopting statutes are sparse, yet they nearly all agreee in fixing the legal status of the adopted child as follows: That it is the event of adoption that fixes, under the law authorizing the adoption, the legal status of the adopted child; and the child, by the event of adoption, becomes the legal child of the adopting parents and stands, as to the property of the adopting parent, in the same light as a child born in lawful wedlock, save in so far as the exceptions in the statute authorizing the adoption declare otherwise. And, when the statute authorizes a full and complete adoption, the child adopted thereunder acquires all of the legal rights and capacity, including that of inheritance of a natural child, and is under the same duties. See Humphries v. Davis, 100 Ind. 280; Wagner v. Varner, 50 Iowa 532; Barnes v. Allen, 25 Ind. 222; Burr...