promises by his successory edict the possession to those in the next
degree, exactly as if the person in the preceding one were nonexistent.
If any one refuses the possession of goods which he has the opportunity
of accepting, it is not unusual to wait until the aforesaid interval,
within which possession must be applied for, has elapsed, but the next
degree is admitted immediately under the same edict.

11 In reckoning the interval, only those days are considered upon which
the persons entitled could have made application.

12 Earlier emperors, however, have judiciously provided that no one
need trouble himself expressly to apply for the possession of goods,
but that, if he shall within the prescribed time in any manner have
signified his intention to accept, he shall have the full benefit of
such tacit acceptance.

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 t