Brown's Adoption

Citations

• 25 Pa. Super. 259
• 1904 Pa. Super. LEXIS 54

Syllabus

<p>Parent and child — Adoption—Revocation of adoption — Temporary resident —Act of May 4, 1855, P. L. 430.</p> <p>While the statutes authorizing adoption are in derogation of the common law, and for this reason are, in some respects, to be strictly construed, yet their construction should not be narrowed so closely as to defeat the legislative intent which may be made obvious by their terms, and by the mischief to be remedied by their enactment.</p> <p>The word “resident” as used in the Act of May 4, 1855, P. L. 430, includes both permanent and temporary residence in the commonwealth.</p> <p>Where a man adopts a child and subsequently marries, and thereafter dies, his widow in the capacity of guardian of a child born nineteen years after the decree, has no standing, twenty-one years after the decree and a year and one half after the death of the husband, to maintain a petition to revoke the decree of adoption, on^the ground that the record of the adoption proceedings described the decedent as “of Brooklyn, New York,” without showing that he was at the time a temporary resident of Pennsylvania.</p>