THE ENACTMENTS OF JUSTINIAN.
  
THE NOVELS.
~  CLXVI  ~
CONCERNING ADDITIONS, THAT IS TO SAY, CONCERNING THE TRANSFER OF TAXES FROM STERILE LANDS TO THOSE THAT ARE FERTILE.



 
S. P. Scott, The Civil Law, XVII, Cincinnati, 1932 ).
 

 
Tenor of This Constitution.
  Where a deceased person, during his lifetime, and for good cause, alienated a tract of land, an estate, or a farm, and, at his death, left the remainder of his property to his children, or to foreign heirs, and the latter sold a part of said property, and the purchaser who acquired it subsequently abandoned a portion of the same, so that there would be no ground for the transfer of the taxes to other lands, belonging to the same estate, and which have the same origin (see Books X and XII of the Code, On Abandoned Lands), the taxes on the deserted estate shall not be borne by all the lands of similar character at the same time, but must first be imposed upon any other real estate which the possessor of the same purchased from the children or foreign heirs of the deceased; and if the said purchaser should not be solvent, the taxes shall be paid by the heirs of the decedent, that is to say, by the lands (derived from the same estate) of which the said heirs are in possession; and where said lands are not sufficient to pay them, they shall be transferred to the other property of the deceased, which has passed into the hands of other persons than his heirs. Thus the taxes will be transferred to him who has bought a tract of land, or a farm of the deceased, as We stated in the beginning. The same rule will also apply where these lands have been conveyed to several successors. For when the last, or most recent possessors of property are solvent, the tax is not borne by the oldest of them in point of time, or, in other words, the first possessors will not then be liable for the taxes on lands abandoned by the last ones; and when there are several heirs of the same degree and order to whom the tax should be transferred, it shall not be distributed equally among them, but in proportion to the property in their possession which was derived from the same estate.