Latham

The brief of the appellant is prepared upon the conception, that the statute in force at the time a child is adopted, rather than that passing and distributing the estate of an adoptive father subsequently dying intestate, determines whether the child is capable of talcing the relation of an inheritor to the personal property that the parent left. The rule is otherwise.

In the early 60s, when Seward M. Latham adopted George M. Latham, by decree of the Probate Court in Cumberland county, the inherent capacity of succession or inheritance did not arise from that relation. By the statute then…