VETO MESSAGE.
The following communication was received from His Excellency the Governor:
INDIANAPOLIS, Ind., April 15, 1881.
Gentlemen of the Senate:
I respectfully return to the Senate with my objections Senate bill No. 142, entitled an act to amend Section 3 of an act entitled an act regulating the adoption of heirs, approved March 21, 1855.
Section 3 of the act of which the bill returned is amendatory, provides that an adopted child "shall take the name in which it is adopted and be entitled to and receive all the rights and interest in the estate of such adopted father mother, by descent or otherwise, that such child would if the natural heir of such adopted father and mother."
The amendment, contained in the present bill, adds, that 'If such adopted child shall receive an inheritance from its adopted father or mother
page: 185[View Page 185]either by devise or descent, and shall die intestate, without lawful issue or their descendants alive seized of such inheritance, or any part thereof, the property so inherited shall descend to the heirs of such adopted father or mother the same as though it had never been inherited by such adopted child.
It is evident that if this amendment should prevail, a surviving wife of an intestate adopted child would receive no part of the lands of which her husband deed seized which he had inherited from his adopted father or mother. I can perceive no good reason why a widow should not receive a third of her husband's land inherited from an adopting father, in like manner as if the lands had been inherited by the husband from her father or mother by consanguinity.
ALBERT G. PORTER.
