The Orphan's Court
The orphan's court was an organization established in the Chesapeake Bay colonies during colonization. The major goal of the organization was to protect orphaned children and their right to their deceased family's estate from claims and against abuses by stepparents and others.
Modern-day orphan's courts are surrogate courts, hearing matters involving wills of decedents' estates which are contested and supervising estates which are probated judicially.
Read more about this topic: Probate Court
Famous quotes containing the words orphan and/or court:
“A man should not go where he cannot carry his whole sphere or society with him,Mnot bodily, the whole circle of his friends, but atmospherically. He should preserve in a new company the same attitude of mind and reality of relation, which his daily associates draw him to, else he is shorn of his best beams, and will be an orphan in the merriest club.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Of all things in life, Mrs. Lee held this kind of court-service in contempt, for she was something more than republican—a little communistic at heart, and her only serious complaint of the President and his wife was that they undertook to have a court and to ape monarchy. She had no notion of admitting social superiority in any one, President or Prince, and to be suddenly converted into a lady-in-waiting to a small German Grand-Duchess, was a terrible blow.”
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)