Researchers claim a relative formally and legally adopted his step-children. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Following the money is the best way to find out. The relative’s estate was settled in Illinois in 1904. He had a relatively significant amount of real and personal property at the time. The step-children were alive in 1904. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The relative does not name the adopted children in his will–even to give them a token amount so they cannot say they were forgotten. They are not listed in the “Order of heirship” where his biological children were listed. A reference to contemporary state statute indicated that legally adopted children could inherit from their adopted parents. That seems to suggest that the step-children were not legally adopted by their step-father. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Reading state statutes can be tedious, but it can often answer genealogical relationship questions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Most 19th and 20th century state statute publications have been digitized and are available online through GoogleBooks <\/em>or other sites containing digital images of books. The Advancing Genealogist<\/a><\/em> contains links to images of revised state code organized by state.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Researchers claim a relative formally and legally adopted his step-children. Following the money is the best way to find out. The relative’s estate was settled in Illinois in 1904. He had a relatively significant amount of real and personal property at the time. The step-children were alive in 1904. The relative does not name the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":153978,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16309","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16309","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/153978"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16309"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16309\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}