Law Dictionary of Legal Terminology

INTERDICTION

INTERDICTION, civil law. A legal restraint upon a person incapable of managing his estate, because of mental incapacity, from signing any deed or doing any act to his own prejudice, without the consent of his curator or interdictor.

2. Interdictions are of two kinds, voluntary or judicial. The first is usually executed in the form of an obligation by which the obligor binds himself to do no act which may affect his estate without the consent of certain friends or other persons therein mentioned. The latter, or judicial interdiction, is imposed by a sentence of a competent tribunal, which disqualifies the party on account of imbecility, madness, or prodigality, and deprives the person interdicted of the right to manage his affairs and receive the rents and profits of his estate.

3. The Civil Code of Louisiana makes the following provisions on this subject: Art. 382. No person above the age of majority, who is subject to an habitual state of madness or insanity, shall be allowed to take charge of his own person or to administer his estate, although such person shall, at times, appear to have the possession of his reason.

4. - 383. Every relation has a right to petition for the interdiction of a relation; and so has every hushand a right to petition for the interdiction of his wife, and every wife of her hushand.

5.- 384. If the insane person has no relations and is not married, or if his relations or consort do not act, the interdiction may be solicited by any stranger, or pronounced ex officio by the judge, after having heard the counsel of the person whose interdiction is prayed for, whom it shall be the, duty of the judge to name, if one be not already named, by the party.

385. Every interdiction shall be pronounced by the judge of the parish of the domicil or residence of the person to be interdicted.

386. The acts of madness, insanity or fury, must be proved to the satisfaction of the judge, that he may be enabled to pronounce the interdiction, and this proof may be established, as well by written as by parol evidence and the judge may moreover interrogate or cause to be interrogated by any other person commissioned by him for that purpose, the person whose interdiction is petitioned for, or cause such person to be examined by pbysicians, or other skilful persons, in order to obtain their report upon oath on the real situation of him who is stated to be of unsound mind.

387. Pending the issue of the petition for interdiction the judge may, if he deems it proper, appoint for the preservation of the movable, and for the administration of the immovable estate of the defendant, an administrator pro tempore.

388. Every judgment, by which an interdiction is renounced, shall be provisionally executed, notwithstanding the appeal.

389. In case of appeal, the appellate court may, if they deem it necessary, proceed to the hearing of new proofs, and question or cause to be questioned, as above provided, the person whose interdiction is petitioned for, in order to ascertain the state of his mind.

390. On every petition for interdiction, the cost shall be paid out of the estate of the defendant, if he shall be interdicted, and by the petitioner, if the interdiction prayed for shall not be pronounced.

391. Every sentence of interdiction shall be published three times, in at least two of the newspapers printed in New Orleans, or made known by advertisements at the door of the court-house of the parish of the domicil of the person interdicted, both in the French and English languages; and this duty is imposed upon him who shall be appointed curator of the person interdicted, and shall be performed within a month after the date of the interdiction, under the penalty of being answerable for all damages to such persons as may, through ignorance, have contracted with the person interdicted.

392. No petition for interdiction, if the same shall have once been rejected, shall be acted upon again, unless new facts, happening posterior to the sentence, shall be alleged.

393. The interdiction takes place from the day of presenting the petition for the same.

394. All acts done by the person interdicted, from the date of the filing the petition for interdiction until the day when the same is pronounced, are null.

395. No act anterior to the petition for the interdiction, shall be annulled except where it shall be proved that the cause of such interdiction notoriously existed at the time when the deeds, the validity of which is contested, were made, or that the party who contracted with the lunatic or insane person, could not have been deceived as to the situation of his mind. Notoriously, in this article, meaus that the insanity was generally known by the persons who saw and conversed with the party.

396. After the death of a person, the validity of acts done by him cannot be contested for cause of insanity, unless his interdiction was pronounced or petitioned for, previous to the death of such person, except in cases in which mental alienation manifested itself within ten days previous to the decease, or in which the proof of the want of reason results from the act itself which is contested.

397. Within a month, to reckon from the date of the judgment of interdiction, if there has been no appeal from the same, or if there has been an appeal, then within a month from the confirmative sentence, it shall be the duty of the judge of the palish of the doimcil or residence of the person interdicted, to appoint a curator to his person and estate.

398. This appointment is made according to the same forms as the appointment to the tutorship of minors. After the appointment of the curator to the person interdicted, the duties of the administrator, pro tempore, if he shall not have been appointed curator, are at an end and he shall give an account of his administration to the curator.

399. The married woman, who is interdicted, is of course under the curatorship of her hushand. Nevertheless, it is the duty of the hushand, in such case, to cause to be appointed by the judge, a curator ad litem; who may appear for the wife in every case when she may have an interest in opposition to the interest of her hushand, or one of a nature to be pursued or defended jointly with his.

400. The wife may be appointed curatrix to her hushand, if she has, in other respects, the necessary qualifications. She is not bound to give security.

401. No one, except the hushand, with respect to his wife, or wife with respect to her hushand, the relations in the ascending line with respect to the relations in the descending line, and vice versa, the relations in the descending line with respect to the relations in the ascending line, can be compelled to act as curator to a person interdicted more than ten years, after which time the curator may petition for his discharge.

402. The person interdicted is, in every respect, like the minor who has not arrived at the age of puberty, both as it respects his person and estate; and the rules respecting the guardianship of the minor, concerning the oath, the inventory and the security, the mode of administering the sale of the estate, the commission on the revenues, the excuses, the exclusion or deprivation of the guardianship, mode of rendering the accounts, and the other obligations, apply with respect to the person interdicted.

403. When any of the children of the person interdicted is to be married, the dowry or advance of money to be drawn from his estate is to be regulated by the judge, with the advice of a family meeting.

404. According to the symptons of the disease, under which the person interdicted labors, and according to the amount of his estate, the judge may order that the interdicted person he attended in his own house, or that he be placed in a bettering-house, or indeed, if he be so deranged as to be dangerous, he may order him to be confined in safe custody.

>405. The income of the person interdicted shall be employed in mitigating his sufferings, and in accelerating his cure, under the penalty against the curator of being removed in case of neglect.

406. He who petitions for the interdiction of any person, and fails in obtaining such interdiction, may be prosecuted for and sentenced to pay damages, if he shall have acted from motives of interest or passion.

407. Interdiction ends with the cause which gave rise to it. Nevertheless, the person interdicted cannot resume the exercise of his rights, until after the definite judgment by which a repeal of the interdiction is pronounced.

408. Interdiction can only be revoked by the same solemnities which were observed in pronouncing it.

6. - 409. Not only lunatics and idiots are liable to be interdicted, but likewise all persons who, owing to certain infirmities, are incapable of taking care of their persons and administering their estates.

7. Such persons shall be placed under the care of a curator, who shall be appointed and shall administer in conformity with the rules contained in the present chapter.

8. - 410. The person interdicted cannot be taken out of the state without a judicial order, given on the recommendation of a a family meeting, and on the opinion delivered under oath of at least two physicians, that they believe the departure necessary to the health of the person interdicted .

9. - 411. There shall be appointed by the judge a superintendent to the person interdicted whose duty it shall be to inform the judge, at least once in three months, of the state of the health of the person interdicted, and of the manner in which he is treated.

10. To this end, the superintendent shall have free access to the person interdicted, whenever he wishes to see him.

11. - 412. It is the duty of the judge to visit the person interdicted, whenever, from the information he receives, he shall deem it expedient.

12. This visit shall be made at times when the curator is not present.

13. - 413. Interdiction is not allowed on account of profligacy or prodigality. Vide Ray's Med. Jur. chap. 25; 1 Hagg. Eccl. Rep. 401; Committee; Habitual Drunkard.