Is there any jurisdiction, in which one can adopt an adult person? I'm working on a fiction text that revolves around the idea that many men marry women like their mothers. I thought that it would be an interesting plot twist, if a woman adopted the man. In order for the story to be more or less believable, there must be a legal way to do it. Therefore my question: Is there any place on Earth, where a woman could legally adopt a man roughly her age (30-40 years)?
Yes, this is legal in many US states, perhaps most. Search for "adult adoption". For instance, here is the procedure in Colorado. Also, another article on the topic. Before the advent of same-sex marriage, this used to be a technique for a same-sex couple to legally formalize their relationship; one partner would adopt the other. Here is a New York Times Magazine article about the practice. Here is another article, from The Atlantic. They even refer to a case in which the parent was younger than the child.
I don't know what you mean by "own a person's DNA", but analogous to owning a car or picture, you can't own a person, which is what would be required to have complete ownership of all of a person's DNA. You can legally own a sample of a person's DNA, for example by buying or bartering tissue, or if you are given tissue. If you grab a handful of hair from a person and pull it out, it is not legally yours, and you can be required to return it. If you lose, misplace or abandon tissue (or a knife), then the finder could end up owning it, depending on the circumstances. Tissue in the trash is more complicated since there may be municipal laws preventing dumpster-diving. Setting aside any such municipal codes, if you abandon your property, someone else can claim it. Hair on the floor of a barbershop, or in the trash, is a good example abandonment: it could also be an example of trespassing, in case the barber objects to you gathering samples from his floor. The 4th Amendment cannot be used to secure your DNA: it could be used to prevent securing DNA, if the intended application is compelled blood drawing. The ruling in Maryland v. King did not say that "your DNA can be taken and entered into a national database if you are ever arrested, rightly or wrongly, and for whatever reason", since that was an objection to the majority ruling given in the dissent, not part of the actual ruling. Maybe that will end up being true, but that hasn't been determined to be the law yet. With a warrant, the police can take a tissue sample, and not wait for you to throw a tissue sample in the trash. They can also take a cheek swab from an arrestee just like they can take a photo or fingerprints (that's what Maryland v. King says). Once we've settled the matter of obtaining a DNA sample, the concept of ownership might be relevant if a party could restrict others from using that DNA pattern. But DNA is not subject to patent or copyright, so once I know your DNA pattern, you cannot legally prevent me from using that information. However, you might, if I gave you a sample as part of a contract, and there is a clause in that contract that prevents the other party from ever using that information.
Independent Thought vs Union Of India (2017) apparently states the law of India, presently, and the answer is, 18. India being a common law country, the Supreme Court has the power to interpret the law when the statutory language might suggest something else. The issue is that marital intercourse is often an exception to rape laws (India does not recognize rape between husband and wife). The court ruled that &quot;sexual intercourse with a girl below 18 years of age is rape regardless of whether she is married or not&quot;. The court found the legal distinction between married girls and unmarried girls to be unnecessary and artificial, discriminatory, and not in the best interest of the girl child. They leave untouched the lack of application of rape law to married couples over 18. This extends legal prohibitions beyond what is stated in POCSO, a law discussed in para 37 ff of the ruling. One can detect in degree of dissatisfaction on the court's part with the legislature's failure to reach the conclusion that they announce.
Not exactly, There were limited instances of the institution of wife selling in Britain in the early modern period, but this practice was never transferred to the United States and received as part of its common law. The institution of wife selling had been abolished long, long before the year 1925 in Britain and had never existed in the U.S., and was quite rare even when it had existed in Britain (where it functionally served as a poor man's alternative to divorce if a substitute husband could be located for an unfaithful or unwanted wife). Also, even in the early English common law, a marriage only arose with a woman's consent (sometimes implied from cohabitation or pregnancy in cases of common law marriage), even though de facto arranged marriages were common. While the wedding ceremony, in part, contemplated a notion that a father sold his daughter to the groom and at some times a father actually did have veto power over his children's marriage in England (causing many elopements to Scotland), the woman actually still had to consent in England, at least in principle, to the marriage. Married women did have greatly diminished legal rights, but they lacked important aspects of being property such as transferability. At common law, the legal status of a married woman was very different from that of an unmarried adult woman (a &quot;femme sole&quot;), and was more like that of a child, and the legal rights of men and women in marriage were, in general, very different. Phoog's answer is correct in identifying the doctrine of coverture and the suspension of the legal personality of the wife upon marriage as the dominant aspect of the differential treatment of women in marriage, but I will spell out in this answer the pervasive nature of the doctrine as applied since some of the practical consequences of this general idea are not obvious. In the most pure version of the traditional English common law, rules included the following: Upon marriage, all property of the married woman became property of her husband instead, which the husband had sole authority to manage. A wife's earnings were her husband's property and not her own. But, trusts could be established by third parties (often a father or uncle) for the benefit of a married woman that did not become a husband's property, and her blood relations would often give a woman gifts that in the case of personalty were not always in the full control of the husband. A married woman could not enter into binding contracts except for &quot;necessities&quot;, and could not enter into executory contracts (i.e. contracts to be performed in the future). There was no criminal liability for offenses other than murder committed by a husband against a wife or vice versa (e.g. rape and domestic violence of a husband directed at a wife was legal). A husband had a right to physically discipline his wife or to hire a third-party public official to do so on his behalf and many local governments had an official whose responsibilities included physically disciplining wives at a husband's request for a scheduled fee. Adultery was a crime and wives were generally the ones most likely to be prosecuted for it. A wife was legally obligated to maintain her domicile with her husband and could be legally compelled (with third-party assistance if necessary) to return to it. There was no civil liability between spouses who were one person under the law (i.e. spouses could not sue each other in court). This changed mostly in the mid-20th century. But, a husband was often held to civil liability for the acts of his wife to a similar extent to the liability he would have for the acts of his children or his dogs and livestock. Wive could not (and still cannot in most circumstances) testify against their husbands in court on any matter. A lawsuit of a wife against a third person would generally be brought by the husband either on her behalf or in cases such as personal injury suits for &quot;loss of consortium&quot; (a legal right of the man to companionship and service from his wife). Wives generally had no right to inherit from their own families (at least for real property, inheritance of personalty in early common law England was vested in the Church of England, another part of the common law not carried over to the U.S.), and spousal inheritance rights were governed by principles of curtsey and dower (often leaving a surviving spouse a life estate in property, rather than ownership of it). Women, in general, could not vote or run for public office or serve on juries or be drafted to serve in the military. In the early common law era, divorce could only be secured by legislation, not by a court. A wife could, however, apply to a court for &quot;separation from bed and board&quot; that would leave the marriage intact, but would allow her to live at a different domicile and to have her husband compelled to support her with what amounted to alimony. This was available on grounds comparable to early 20th century fault based divorce. Custody of children and full authority over them in the event of a dispute was generally vested in a husband. Children born during a marriage were conclusively presumed to be a husband's children even if this was highly implausible as a matter of fact, and children born outside of marriage were illegitimate and had no legal rights at all vis-a-vis their fathers. But, in most cases, a free adult femme sole (as opposed to an indentured servant or slave) had the same legal rights as a man. In practice, this was only viable for wealthy women or self-employed women as few forms of regular employment were available to women (most commonly entering into a relationship with an employer as a domestic servant which was a bit like indentured servitude except that the servant was paid money in addition to room and board, and had the right to quit). Also, a man could vest authority to manage the couple's estate in his wife, which would not be uncommon, particularly if the husband was away at war or on business. Not every U.S. state followed this regime in a pure manner, but a substantial part of this regime governing the rights of married women was adopted almost everywhere in the U.S. at some point (except for the states entering the union in the 20th century). This changed on a state by state basis, partially due to evolution of the common law, but in substantial part due to the passage of &quot;Married Women's Property Acts&quot; mostly in the 19th century. Remaining vestiges of this regime that were not changed legislatively by the 20th century were mostly later struck down by courts, often on 14th Amendment grounds, although removal of some of the criminal law immunities (the last of which was the marital rape exemption) was legislative and came in the later 20th century. The 19th century was also the time period during which legislative divorce was replaced on a state by state basis with court-granted fault-based divorce, which in turn was replaced on a state by state basis in the late 20th century and early 21st century (New York State was the last to adopt no-fault divorce). I have a teacher who alluded that during the time the text was written, 1925, wives were considered to be a man's property. This raised red flags for me, as I know this may be true figuratively but I want to know if that was legally the case ever in the United States, and particularly in 1925. In 1925, most U.S. states had passed Married Women's Property Acts (including the states featured in the Great Gatsby), and court-granted divorces on the basis of fault were available (although rare), but there were still many residual aspects of the early common law regime in place. Divorce was, in practice, hard to obtain and expensive. Adultery was a crime and marital rape was not. A husband was generally immune from criminal liability concerning a wife, although often this would be in the form of a privilege similar to the self-defense privilege for &quot;reasonable discipline of a wife&quot; similar to the exclusion today for reasonable discipline of children, rather than an absolute immunity from liability. Civil liability exemptions would have still existed. Many &quot;heart balm torts&quot; (which allowed civil remedies for adultery for example against the other man) would have been in existence (a few U.S. states still have them), which effectively gave a husband some &quot;property rights&quot; in his wife's fidelity that had to be observed by third parties. But, by 1925 many states were starting to legislatively repeal cause of action for &quot;heart balm&quot; torts. Inheritance laws would not have been gender neutral but would not have so decisively disfavored married women either. In divorces, the &quot;tender years doctrine&quot; which awarded children under 12 to wives and older children to husbands would have been in the process of development. Some of the presumptions about a husband's authority over a wife's property and a woman's obligation to share a domicile with her husband would have been widely understood even though the legal basis for this living law would have been eroding and it would be outrageous in that time period to use third-party physical force to compel a woman to return to a domicile or to discipline a wife. In short, while a wife was not a husband's property in 1925 and had many more legal rights than she did in the early common law era, a wife still had many legal disabilities at that point in time and in the living law in the minds of ordinary people, her rights were even more diminished than the relatively progressive legal rights that she had under relatively newly enacted legislation. The mindset of wives as property, while not strictly true, still have a residual influence and relevance in the form of residual legal disabilities of married women.
The exception is often called a Romeo and Juliet exception colloquially when applied to statutory rape laws. See, e.g. here. It is an exception to the age of capacity to consent to sexual conduct, not an exception to the capacity to consent to a contract. When children are very young (typically in the range of 7 to 12 as set by statute of common law, it is 6 in North Carolina) they lack the capacity to commit a crime, which has to do with the age of the offender and not the mutual ages of those involved. Is the principle described above called something? How old is it? Did the Romans apply a similar concept? The medieval Catholic church? The principle that you described is a misunderstanding of the law and is incorrect. No jurisdiction has adopted it in the sense that you articulate. When these instances are not punishable as crimes they are not punishable for different reasons. So, the question of &quot;how old is it?&quot; is a category error that has no answer. The medieval Catholic church did not have any criminal or contract jurisprudence. Both of those domains were handled by secular officials, usually either feudal lords or the officials of a &quot;free city&quot;. In the medieval period, feudal secular law was often arbitrary and often came down to the personal whims of the individual holding the title. As @hmvsm appropriately notes, however, it did have doctrine about when a child was morally responsible for sins, but final adjudication of whether you sinned or not was ultimately determined in the afterlife, and the church doctrine of forgiveness of sins made the issue moot to a great extent. The Roman Empire, of course, did have secular laws, but its laws in the area of contractual capacity, which are largely replicated by modern European civil codes, didn't contain the principle that you propose. To the best of my knowledge, the modern concept of statutory rape was unknown in the Roman world. The lack of hard age based cutoffs was, in part, because vital statistics record keeping was nowhere near universal, so many people did not even know their exact age in a legally provable manner. Approximate age in the very late Roman Empire would often have been determined based upon time elapsed since an infant baptism as recorded by church officials, but Christianity went from being very rare to universal between about 275 CE and 450 CE, and Rome fell not long after that point.
Based on some quick searching, this would likely be a wrongful death action. I have to pick a state, so I'll pick Nevada. The first question is what damages could be. I don't know offhand what is typical in wrongful death suits, but this appears to be beyond mere negligence: there was a hit and run involved. I have no trouble believing the claim would reach at least six figures. This is important, because federal diversity jurisdiction only includes lawsuits with over $75,000 at stake. Now, Santa Claus's citizenship matters; if he were stateless it'd be an issue, but he is a citizen of Canada. That means that federal court has diversity jurisdiction: because the lawsuit is between a citizen of one state on one side and a foreign citizen on the other (no state has citizens on both sides of the lawsuit), and meets Congress's extra requirements (enough money at stake), it can be in federal court. The way diversity jurisdiction works is that the plaintiff can file in federal court, but if they choose to file in Nevada court then the defendant can remove the case to federal court. Either party can get it into federal court. Conventional wisdom is that federal court is more defendant-friendly than state court on state law claims. It is likely that if Grandpa files the case in any court in Nevada, the case will end up in the United States District Court for the District of Nevada. But suppose it is in state court? Most states don't have separate "county court" and "state court" systems; county courts are a thing, but they're a specialized thing and the serious stuff is not in those. A six-figure wrongful death claim won't go in Nevada's equivalent of small claims court. It'd go in Nevada district court, if it's in state courts. But what about other courts? Grandma was walking home, so it can be assumed she was a Nevada resident. Assuming Grandpa lived with her (which is rather likely), so is he. They then can't sue in any US state other than Nevada without being laughed out of court -- a lawsuit needs to have something to do with where you're suing. The other option is Canada, but such a suit is unlikely.
"Kidnapping is the unlawful taking away or transportation of a person against that person's will" The crime would occur if the second person was taken by the first, the age of the perpetrator is immaterial to the commission of the crime but it will affect where and how it is prosecuted. The age of the victim will matter as the victim must be old enough to competently grant consent - if they are too young to do so then it will be a kidnapping. On the face of it "running away together" does not imply an unwillingness. Note also that kidnapping is the crime of "taking away"; holding a person against their will is the different crime of false imprisonment.
(I am not your lawyer. I am not here to help you. If you are reading this because someone has died, please stop and instead read the Scottish Courts and Tribunals guide to dealing with a deceased's estate in Scotland, or contact a solicitor.) Yes, in general. Section 1 of the Wills Act 1963, which is in force in Scotland, specifies that "[a] will shall be treated as properly executed if its execution conformed to the internal law in force in the territory where it was executed." Furthermore, Section 4 states that "[t]he construction of a will shall not be altered by reason of any change in the testator’s domicile after the execution of the will." "Construction" here refers to interpreting the language and effect of the will. So if the will was validly executed in England, it should also be in force in Scotland, and a Scottish court will give it the same meaning it would have had under English law. Furthermore, the same rule of validity seems to apply in both England and Scotland: Wills Act 1837 section 9. There may be other Scottish laws affecting the disposition of the estate that differ from English law. Relevant statutes include Succession (Scotland) Act 1964, section 21A, which seems consistent with Wills Act 1963. (I am trained in U.S. rather than English or Scottish law; I'm trusting the accuracy of the UK's excellent online legislation archive for the proposition that the statutes cited are in force in Scotland. I haven't checked the case law for contrary interpretations.)