義子의 養子 지정 사례를 통해 본 16세기 收養, 侍養 관행 -「1584년 나주목 결급 입안」의 향리가 양자 사례를 중심으로-

Abstract

This paper analyzes the “1584 Naju-mok Civil Docket” concerning the adoption by local clerk family member Ms. Jeong of her youngest stepchild, as well as the corresponding passing down to that child most of her property. It assays the significance that this case held within the suyang (收養) and siyang (侍養) adoption customs of early Joseon, and within the familial and relative relations—as well as the social order—of the 16thcentury. This suit began as a dispute between Jeong’s side of the family and the stepchild in question. With the legal recognition of youngest stepchild Na Ginyeon’s receiving the majority of Jeong’s estate in his capacity as her suyang/siyang adoptee, the suit wound up as a legal victory for the stepchild’s side. Both suyang and siyang adoption practices were unrestricted in the objects or purposes of adoption. However, according to the relative relations and the estate bequeathing and inheritance practices of the time, in a married couple’s selecting among their blood relatives a suyang/siyang adoptee, both the husband’s family and the wife’s family commonly preferred to select from among their own lines. Yet the 1584 case was one of the adoption of a husband’s stepchild, with no blood relation to the adopter. Although there exist some 15thcentury examples of a woman’s adopting a husband’s son or grandson as her own, among those outside the court, the 1584case stands out as the only one in which a wife—having inherited a sizable estate from her parents—takes a direct descendant of her husband as the adoptee and passes on to him the majority of that estate. The significance of this 16thcentury adoption of a stepchild and corresponding bequeathing of estate can be understood as follows. This was an instance of a close bond forming between a stepmother and the stepchild she had raised from an early age, and that stepmother’s bequeathing the majority of her estate to that child with the request that he perform rites for her after her death. Ms. Jeong did not just adopt Na Ginyeon as her own child and treat him differently than her other stepchildren, bequeathing him the majority of her estate. She moreover elected not to give property to those among her own side of the family who held inheritance rights to her property, and through this lawsuit arising after her death, ultimately secured recognition for her preferred manner of passing down her estate. This became a means for the designation of one’s suyang/siyang adopted children to freely reflect a property owner’s estate planning intentions. In the 16thcentury, certain yangban families—diverging from established adoption customs and responding to the government’s policies of promoting Confucian ancestral ritual forms—began to designate as a childless woman’s suyang/siyang adoptee the husband’s family successor, and to bequeath the majority of her estate to that child, together with the request that the child continue to perform rites for both adopted parents after their deaths. But the 1584 case stands apart from this trend; it was a case of a wife’s selecting, separate from her husband’s successor, her youngest stepchild as her adopted child, and of naming him the keeper of her rites. In other words, it was the implementation of an earlier form of adoption, in which the husband and the wife each designated their own successor and heir to their estate. That despite this, the suit’s presiding official recognized Ms. Jeong’s passing down of her estate can be understood in light of the fact that, even though Joseon’s government had—since the start of the dynasty—focused intensely on ensuring the spread and establishment of Confucian ancestral ritual forms, developing numerous systems to hasten the process and even creating a new adoption law, it also recognized the coexistence of the preexisting adoption forms suyang and siyang. This case also reveals that for the 16thcentury magistrate directly interfacing with those he governed, providing that one’s choice of adopted child—even if that choice were made on the basis of preexisting adoption practices and according to one’s personal feelings and to one’s own benefit—did not violate the law or disturb the customs of life, respecting and actively acknowledging those adoption choices was a real strategy of rule.