After family heirs, and persons who by the praetor and the imperial legislation are ranked as such, and after persons statutorily entitled, among whom are the agnates and those whom the aforesaid senatusconsults and our constitution have raised to the rank of agnates, the praetor calls the nearest cognates.

1 In this class or order natural or blood relationship alone is considered: for agnates who have undergone loss of status and their children, though not regarded as having a statutory title under the statute of the Twelve Tables, are called by the praetor in the third order of the succession. The sole exceptions to this rule are emancipated brothers and sisters, though not in equal shares with them, but with some deduction, the amount of which can easily be ascertained from the terms of the constitution itself. But to other agnates of remoter degrees, even though they have not undergone loss of status, and still more to cognates, they are preferred by the aforesaid statute.

2 Again, collateral relations connected with the deceased only by the female line are called to the succession by the praetor in the third order as cognates;

3 and children who are in an adoptive family are admitted in this order to the inheritance of their natural parent.

4 It is clear that illegitimate children can have no agnates, for in law they have no father, and it is through the father that agnatic relationship is traced, while cognatic relationship is traced through the mother as well. On the same principle they cannot be held to be consanguinei of one another, for consanguinei are in a way agnatically related: consequently, they are connected with one another only as cognates, and in the same way too with the cognates of their mother. Accordingly, they can succeed to the possession of goods under that part of the Edict in which cognates are called by the title of mere kinship.

5 In this place too we should observe that a person who claims as an agnate can be admitted to the inheritance, even though ten degrees removed from the deceased, both by the statute of the Twelve Tables, and by the Edict in which the praetor promises the possession of goods to heirs statutorily entitled: but on the ground of mere natural kinship the praetor promises possession of goods to those cognates only who are within the sixth degree; the only persons in the seventh degree whom he admits as cognates being the children of a second cousin of the deceased.