The Institutes of Justinian. Anonymous

this as a ground of exemption, though it will not enable them to resign an office of this kind already entered upon.

      4 No guardian or curator can excuse himself on the ground of an action pending between himself and his ward, unless it relates to the latter's whole estate or to an inheritance.

      5 Again, a man who is already guardian or curator to three persons without having sought after the office is entitled to exemption from further burdens of the kind so long as he is actually engaged with these, provided that the joint guardianship of several pupils, or administration of an undivided estate, as where the wards are brothers, is reckoned as one only.

      6 If a man can prove that through poverty he is unequal to the burden of the office, this, according to rescripts of the imperial brothers and of the Emperor Marcus, is a valid ground of excuse.

      7 Illhealth again is a sufficient excuse if it be such as to prevent a man from attending to even his own affairs:

      8 and the Emperor Pius decided by a rescript that persons unable to read ought to be excused, though even these are not incapable of transacting business.

      9 A man too is at once excused if he can show that a father has appointed him testamentary guardian out of enmity, while conversely no one can in any case claim exemption who promised the ward's father that he would act as guardian to them:

      10 and it was settled by a rescript of M. Aurelius and L. Verus that the allegation that one was unacquainted with the pupil's father cannot be admitted as a ground of excuse.

      11 Enmity against the ward's father, if extremely bitter, and if there was no reconciliation, is usually accepted as a reason for exemption from the office of guardian;

      12 and similarly a person can claim to be excused whose status or civil rights have been disputed by the father of the ward in an action.

      13 Again, a person over seventy years of age can claim to be excused from acting as guardian or curator, and by the older law persons less than twentyfive were similarly exempted. But our constitution, having forbidden the latter to aspire to these functions, has made excuses unnecessary. The effect of this enactment is that no pupil or person under twentyfive years of age is to be called to a statutory guardianship; for it was most incongruous to place persons under the guardianship or administration of those who are known themselves to need assistance in the management of their own affairs, and are themselves governed by others.

      14 The same rule is to be observed with soldiers, who, even though they desire it, may not be admitted to the office of guardian:

      15 and finally grammarians, rhetoricians, and physicians at Rome, and those who follow these callings in their own country and are within the number fixed by law, are exempted from being guardians or curators.

      16 If a person who has several grounds of excuse wishes to obtain exemption, and some of them are not allowed, he is not prohibited from alleging others, provided he does this within the time prescribed. Those desirous of excusing themselves do not appeal, but ought to allege their grounds of excuse within fifty days next after they hear of their appointment, whatever the form of the latter, and whatever kind of guardians they may be, if they are within a hundred miles of the place where they were appointed: if they live at a distance of more than a hundred miles, they are allowed a day for every twenty miles, and thirty days in addition, but this time, as Scaevola has said, must never be so reckoned as to amount to less than fifty days.

      17 A person appointed guardian is deemed to be appointed to the whole patrimony;

      18 and after he has once acted as guardian he cannot be compelled against his will to become the same person's curator—not even if the father who appointed him testamentary guardian added in the will that he made him curator, too, as soon as the ward reached fourteen years of age—this having been decided by a rescript of the Emperors Severus and Antoninus.

      19 Another rescript of the same emperors settled that a man is entitled to be excused from becoming his own wife's curator, even after intermeddling with her affairs.

      20 No man is discharged from the burden of guardianship who has procured exemption by false allegations.