WYAVASTHA-DARPANA. 874 670 and 761, and also Macnaghten's Hindoo L. vol II. page 199, Case No. 10, which is directly to the point. When a widow is acting as an agent in the performance of a certain duty under the alleged instructions of her deceased husband, and there are presumptive heirs who dispute or are likely to dispute the existence of the authority, and the presumptive heir cannot sue for the inheritance till after the death of the widow, and witnesses of the matter may in the mean while be removed from the scene, it is nothing but just that the widow should be allowed to bring a suit to declare her right. In fact, without the establishment of such a right, no prudent parent would like to place his infant son in a position so anomalous as that assigned to persons whose adoption is set aside on aeeouut ef irregularity. If a widow adopt a person after her right to adopt is declared to be invalid, that decree will be binding upon him though he was no party to that suit. As the suit is brought to cstablish a right alleged to have been delegated to her by her husband, and her right is invalidated after an investigation in which she is directly interested as delegatee, the person who afterwards wishes to exercise a right derived from an act of such delegatee will be barred by the decree. For as that decree was binding upon the widow, it necessarily binds all those whose rights depend on her act, P, C, TAGolok, 509 Although authorised by her husband to adopt a son, in the event of a disagreement between her and the son of her rival wife, a woman cannot, even in that case, adopt a son.” Inasmuch as the husband having no power to give permission to adopt while a son of his was living, such permission is utterly ineffectual, and a stepmother, being in the eye of the law mother of male issue by the son of her rival wife, has no power to adopt a son. 510 Whether permission to one's wives for each to adopt a son, be given simultaneously or at different times, if the adoptions take place at one and the same time they are valid, otherwise only the first is valid, and not any other, (if made during the lifetime of the son already adopted.)
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- It has also been ruled, that authority to a wife to adopt, in the event of a disagreement be. tween her and a son of her husband then living, will not avail, though authority in the event of that son's death would be valid.—Macn. H. L. vol. 1. pp. 84–86.-See the case of Mussuminat Soulukkhula v. Ram Doolal Pande, S.D. A. R. vol. I. P. 325.
Vyavastha'. Reason. Vyavastha'.
