o be excused whose status or civil
rights have been disputed by the father of the ward in an action.

13 Again, a person over seventy years of age can claim to be excused
from acting as guardian or curator, and by the older law persons less
than twentyfive were similarly exempted. But our constitution, having
forbidden the latter to aspire to these functions, has made excuses
unnecessary. The effect of this enactment is that no pupil or
person under twentyfive years of age is to be called to a statutory
guardianship; for it was most incongruous to place persons under the
guardianship or administration of those who are known themselves to need
assistance in the management of their own affairs, and are themselves
governed by others.

14 The same rule is to be observed with soldiers, who, even though they
desire it, may not be admitted to the office of guardian:

15 and finally grammarians, rhetoricians, and physicians at Rome, and
those who follow these callings in their own country and are within the
number fixed by law, are exempted from being guardians or curators.

16 If a person who has several grounds of excuse wishes to obtain
exemption, and some of them are not allowed, he is not prohibited from
alleging others, provided he does this within the time prescribed. Those
desirous of excusing themselves do not appeal, but ought to allege
their grounds of excuse within fifty days next after they hear of their
appointment, whatever the form of the latter, and whatever kind of
guardians they may be, if they are within a hundred miles of the place
where they were appointed: if they live at a distance of more than a
hundred miles, they are allowed a day for every twenty miles, and thirty
days in addition, but this time, as Scaevola has said, must never be so
reckoned as to amount to less than fifty days.

17 A person appointed guardian is deemed to be appointed to the whole
patrimony;

18 and after he has once acted as guardian he cannot be compelled
against his will to become the same person's curator--not even if the
father who appointed him testamentary guardian added in the will that
he made him curator, too, as soon as the ward reached fourteen years of
age--this having been decided by a rescript of the Emperors Severus and
Antoninus.

19 Another rescript of the same emperors settled that a man is
entitled to be excused from becoming his own wife's curator, even after
intermeddling with her affairs.

20 No ma