Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

This part of the code treats of corporations or communities, which are considered as political persons, and mere creatures of the law.

II. The code next proceeds, in the Second Book, to treat of things, as the objects of property, and of the different modifications of that property. The term things, embraces every object in which a right of property may be acquired, not only visible and tangible in a physical sense, but the service or labour of individuals, which we may have a right to enforce or require. Some things however are considered as common, which belong to nobody, and in which no permanent right of property can be acquired; but which are for the common use of mankind-such as air, running water, the sea and its shores. These are considered as hors de commerce. Others are considered as public, the property of which belongs to the community or nation-such as seaports, roads, highways, harbours, and navigable rivers and their beds while covered with water. The use of the banks of navigable rivers are regarded as public; but the right of soil, as vested in the riparian proprietor. Among public things are classed such as belong to cities and corporations-such as walls, ditches, the streets and public squares.

The second distinction of things, susceptible of private property, is that of corporeal and incorporeal, which require no definition; a third distinction is that of moveable and immoveable.

Some things are considered as immoveable by their natureothers by destination, and others by the object to which they apply. Of the first class are lands and edifices, ungathered crops, and fruits, and pipes used for conducting water to houses. Things which the owner has placed on an estate, for its service and amelioration, are immoveable by destination-such as cattle intended for cultivation, implements of husbandry, seeds, plants, fodder and manure, and pigeons in a pigeon-house-bee-hives, mills, kettles, alembics, tubs and casks, and other machinery for carrying on works; and, in general, whatever is attached to the immoveable permanently, whether for use or ornament. Immoveables, by the object to which they apply, are the usufruct of immoveables-servitudes due on a tract of land, and the right of action to recover an immoveable. Slaves are declared immoveables, whatever may be the employment to which they are destined.

The term moveables, requires no definition. Some things, however, are considered as moveables by disposition of lawsuch as actions and obligations for the payment of money, stock in banks and other joint companies, together with perpetual rents and annuities.

After these simple and obvious distinctions, the code passes to the consideration of the different degrees and modifications of

property. The full and entire property in a thing, consists in the right of using and enjoying it, the right of disposing of it without restraint, and the right of preventing others from interfering in its enjoyment or disposition. In the restriction of this full right, consists the only modification of property recognised by the code. One may be the proprietor of the thing, another may have the temporary enjoyment of it, and a third the right to exercise certain acts of ownership, or rather to restrict the full enjoyment of the owner, to his exclusion. Instead therefore of freeholds, copy holds, remainders, and reversions, and the complicated distinctions of the common law, the different estates are extremely simple. There are but three kinds of limited perty-to wit, usufruct, use and habitation, and servitudes.

pro

1st. Usufruct is the right of using and enjoying a thing, the property of which is vested in another, and of deriving from it all the advantages of which it is susceptible, without altering its substance. Usufruct is a real right, (jus in re,) which cannot be defeated by any alienation. Although the usufructuary has a right to all the fruits, whether natural or civil, yet crops or fruits ungathered, when the right expires, belong to the owner of the property. The young of cattle belong to the usufructuary. The right of usufruct is essentially transferrable, may be sold, leased, or given away, and may be seized by the creditors of the usufructuary. Unless expressly exempted by the title which confers the right, and except also in cases of usufruct of children's property, by the father or mother, the usufructuary is bound to give security to enjoy the property like a prudent father of a family. If there be an imperfect usufruct of things, liable to be consumed in use, the usufructuary is only bound to restore the same amount. The young of slaves, subject to usufruct, belong to the owner in full right. The usufructuary is bound to make only such repairs, as may be necessary to keep the property in such a state as it was in, at the time he entered on the enjoyment of it; and he can make no changes in the destination of the property.

The right is generally limited to the lifetime of the usufructuary; but it may have a different limitation, and may depend on a contingency. A corporation cannot be constituted usufructuary, for a longer time than thirty years. The usufructuary forfeits his right, who commits waste, or who suffers the estate to go to decay, for want of those. repairs which it was his duty to make; but the proprietor who re-enters for these causes, may be compelled to pay an annual sum, to be fixed by the courts.

2d. Use and habitation (occupation) are still more restricted rights, and are essentially personal, and not alienable. Use is the right of enjoying gratuitously, for one's daily wants, the thing, or the fruits of a thing, belonging to another, without prejudice to the right of property; and habitation is the right of dwelling

gratuitously in another house. He who has the use only, can take such fruits alone as are necessary for his own use and that of his family. He is liable for the annual charges on the property, and for casual repairs.

3d. Servitudes or services of land, embrace what are termed, we believe, at common law, easements. They are, perhaps, inaccurately defined by the code, to be a charge on one estate for the utility of another estate belonging to a different proprietary. The right of passing over a neighbour's land, which is an example, implies the obligation on the part of the owner to suffer it, and that obligation constitutes the servitude or service. It is a restriction of the right of full and exclusive enjoyment of his property. Servitudes either result from the natural situation of contiguous estates, are imposed by obligation of law, or are created by agreements. The land situated below is subjected to the burden of receiving the water which runs naturally from one more elevated; and this service can neither be rendered more onerous by the superior proprietor, nor can it be impeded by embankments below. The owner may use a running stream within the limits of his land, but he is bound to return it to its accustomed channel. This title, among the most minute and curious of the Roman law, embraces the right of way, of drain, of prospect, and an infinity of others, regulating the intercourse of a crowded population, of which it is not our intention to attempt an enumeration. III. The third book treats minutely of the different modes of acquiring property, and is by far the most interesting and important part of the system of which we are attempting a sketch. English jurists reduce all the modes of acquiring property to two, descent and purchase. Such a division is evidently obscure and imperfect. The Code of Louisiana enumerates seven. The rules applicable to each and all its subdivisions embrace the prineiples of hereditary succession; every species of contract or agreement, by which property may be affected or transferred; all the complicated rights and interests of the citizens, growing out of their mutual dealings or intercourse; testaments, donations, the reservations in favour of forced heirs, the rights of married women, and the ample guards provided for the protection of their property, the matrimonial partnership of gains, together with rules for construing as well as proving contracts and agreements; all these matters are treated of, under the seven following heads, which are considered as distinct modes of acquiring property: 1st. By paternal power.

2d. By successions.

3d. By obligations resulting from contracts and covenants. 4th. By obligations which result from the mere act of the person, without covenant, such as quasi contracts and quasi offences. 5th. By accession or incorporation.

[blocks in formation]

6th. By occupancy and prescription.

7th. Judgment and seizure.

1st. The property acquired by what is called the paternal power, is merely the income of fruits of the property belonging to children, which the father and mother acquire during marriage, as usufructuaries, until the age of majority, or the emancipation of their childhood, and out of which they are bound to provide If a separasupport and education according to their means. tion from bed and board take place, the right of usufruct accrues exclusively to the party at whose suit it was pronounced. It does not extend to property acquired by the children, by their own industry, while living separately from their parents.

2d. Succession, considered as a manner of acquiring property, is the act of succeeding to the rights and property of the deceased. The 118th novel of Justinian forms the basis of the law of hereditary succession by the code; with the exception, that by the novel, brothers and sisters of the full blood of the deceased, concurred with his ascendants, and the estate was equally divided between them, and that in the succession of brothers of the half blood, no distinction was made as to the origin of the property left by the intestate.

The code recognises three orders of heirs, to wit: descendants, ascendants, and collaterals. If the intestate have left legitimate children, they all inherit equally, without regard to son, or primogeniture, or to the nature and origin of the property. Children of deceased children concur with their uncles and aunts, jure representationis, and by roots. If there remains only grandchildren, they succeed equally, per capita, and so of more remote descendants.

If the deceased have left no legitimate descendants, his estate goes to his father and mother, grandfather and grandmother, or other ascendants, to the entire exclusion of brothers and sisters, or other collaterals. In the ascending line, the nearest in degree excludes the more remote; if there be two in the same degree, they inherit equally. If there be a grandfather and grandmother in one line, and only one grand parent in the other line, the ascendant who is alone on one side, receives one half, and the other two the half between them. Representation does not take place in the ascending line.

In default of descendants and ascendants, the estate devolves on the collateral relations of the deceased. When he has left only brothers or sisters of the full blood, they inherit to the exclusion of other collaterals; but if there be brothers, and the children of other brothers deceased, also of the full blood, such children come in by representation, and the estate is divided per stirpes. The same rules apply, when only brothers of the half blood survive; but if the deceased has left both brothers of the full and

of the half blood, the former exclude the latter. This prerogative of the full blood exists only in favour of brothers and their children, to the exclusion of half brothers, and their children. The more remote descendants of the whole blood will not exclude those of the half blood. When the intestate has left no brothers of the full blood, but half brothers both on the paternal and maternal side, such brothers and their children exclude all other collateral kindred, as representing their deceased father and mother; and the brothers on the paternal side inherit the property which came through the father, and those on the mother's side, that which was derived from her; and the property acquired by himself by any other title is equally divided between the two branches. Nephews and nieces are preferred to uncles and aunts, although in the same degree. Among other collaterals, the nearer exclude the more remote, and the distribution is made per capita.

Irregular successions are those, in which the surviving husband or wife, or natural children, duly acknowledged, are called to the inheritance. The rule in relation to natural children is variant. They are called to the inheritance of their mother, when she has left no legitimate descendants, even to the exclusion of her father and mother, or other descendants; but they inherit as heirs from their father, only in default of other relatives, either ascendant, descendant, or collateral, or surviving wife, and only to the exclusion of the state. But natural children, even thus admitted as heirs, do not take by representation what their fathers or mothers might have been entitled to, as heirs of their lawful relations. The estates of natural children themselves are inherited by their surviving fathers or mothers, or in default of them, by their natural brothers and sisters.

The surviving wife succeeds to her husband's estate, when not separated from bed and board, if he has left neither legitimate descendants, ascendants, nor collateral relations, and to the exclusion of natural children; but the natural children of the wife are preferred to the surviving husband, who inherits from her only in preference to the state. But these irregular heirs do not succeed of full right; they are bound to give security on taking possession, to restore to an heir, if one should appear, having a better right. When no heir presents himself, the estate is considered as vacant, is administered by a curator, and the proceeds, after paying the debts, are paid into the state treasury.

Presumptive heirs may be excluded from the inheritance at the suit of the next in order, for unworthiness, which is defined by the code. Those who are convicted of having killed or attempted to kill the deceased, unless justifiable or excusable, those who have instituted any accusation, declared to be calumnious, and those who being accused of the murder of the de

« AnteriorContinuar »