Dear Janice,
The laws of adoption in the East are as follows:
According to the laws of the Ottoman Empire of the Middle East that ruled over Palestine before it became the state of Israel, a legal adoption occurred when a man called another his son. Then the British Mandate of the West which succeeded the Ottoman Empire retained the adoption laws of the Ottoman Empire as legal and binding under their rule. Then, for the Israeli government, the law for adoption remained the same. If a man calls another his son and leaves him a token to show inheritance (whether it be a stick or a stone or something), then the adoption is legal and binding. When ‘Abdu’l-Baha proclaimed that Mason was his son (privately, publicly and in letters published in Star of the West Magazine), these were not “vague terms of affection but expressed the precise legal relationship which had been created between them.” Here is cited the law of adoption in the Middle East (from Ottoman times to the present) upheld by the British Mandate of the West and the Israeli Supreme Court on June 22, 1960, long after ‘Abdu’l-Baha adopted Mason to be his son and heir.
Victor