The Issue of Inheritance in Adoption in English and American Law with a Look at Iranian Law

In the Common law system, after the Germanic-Romans tradition, this legal institution has been recognized and its various legal aspects have been formulated. Adoption in the Western legal system has many forms and its number is increasing daily. Lawyers, judges and legislators try to delineate the legal aspects associated with each of these forms. The institution of adoption as the provider of the interests of children and adolescents who have no guardian appointed or suffer from bad parenting has been considered by all legal systems in the world. In Iranian law, as guardianship and in Islamic law, as custody, it has a special but not very clear position. One of the legal issues related to adoption is the issue of inheritance between the child and the legitimate father and his relatives on the one hand and the adopted child and her/his guardian and relatives on the other, an issue that in Iranian law, relying on the silence of the legislature, and the universally accepted views of experts in jurisprudence and law, does not provide for the mutual interest of the adopted child and the guardian, and therefore requires further examination. In the present study, an attempt is made to initiate a new perspective into the issue of securing the interests of the child from the guardian's property after his death and vice versa by examining the existing approaches in the laws and precedent in the United Kingdom and the United States regarding the issue of inheritance in various forms of adoption.