(A) civil law. The act by which a person chooses another from a strange family, to have all the rights of his own child. (B) (1) The process of becoming the legal parent to the child of another person. (2) To accept something or make it practice as seen elsewhere, such as the state’s legislature’s adoption of a local law.
Law Dictionary – Alternative Legal Definition
The act of one who takes another’s child into his own family, treating him as his own, and giving him all the rights and duties of his own child. A juridical act creating between two persons certain relations, purely civil, of paternity and filiation.