NEXT FRIEND. One who, without being regularly appointed guardian¹, acts for the benefit of an infant, married woman, or other person, not sui juris. Vide Amy; Prochein Amy.

NEXT OF KIN². This term is used to signify the relations of a party who has died intestate.

2. In general no one comes within this term who is not included in the provisions of the statutes³ of distribution. 3 Atk. 422, 761; 1 Ves. sen. 84. A wife cannot, in general, claim as next of kin of her husband, nor a husband as next of kin of his wife. But when there are circumstances in a will which induce a belief of an intention to include them under this term, they will be so considered, though in the ordinary sense of the word, they are not. Hov. Fr. 288, 9; 1 My. & Keen, 82. Vide Branch; Kindred; Line.

NEXUM, Rom. civ. law. Viewed as to its object and legal effect, nexum was either the transfer of the ownership of a thing, or the transfer of a thing to a creditor⁴ as a security. Accordingly in one sense nexum included mancipium, in another sense mancipium and nexum are opposed in the same way in which sale and mortgage or pledge are opposed. The formal part of both transactions consisted in a transfer per Des et libram. The person who became nexus⁵ by the effect of a nexum, placed himself in a servile condition, not becoming a slave, his ingenuitas being only in suspense⁶, and was said nexum inire. The phrases nexi datio, nexi liberatio, respectively express the contracting and the release from the obligation.

2. The Roman law, as to the payment of borrowed money, was very strict. A curious passage of Gellius (xx. 1) gives us the ancient mode of legal procedure in the case of debt as fixed⁷ by the Twelve Tables. If the debtor⁸ admitted the debt, or bad been condemned⁹ in the amount of the debt by a judex, he had thirty days allowed him for payment. At the expiration¹⁰ of this time he was liable to the manus. injectio, and ultimately to be assigned over to the creditor (addictus) by the sentence of the praetor. The creditor was required to keep him for sixty days in chains, during which time he publicly exposed the debtor, on three nundinae, and proclaimed the amount of bis debt. If no person released the prisoner by paying the debt, the creditor might sell him as a slave or put him to death. If there were several debtors¹¹, the letter of the law allowed them to cut the debtor in pieces, and take their share of his body in proportion to their debt. Gellius says that there was no instance of a creditor ever having adopted this extreme mode of satisfying his debt. But the creditor might treat the debtor, who was addictus, as a slave, and compel him to work out his debt, and the treatment was often very severe. In this passage Gellius does not speak of nexi but only of addicti, which is sometimes alleged¹² as evidence of the identity of nbxus and addictus, but it proves no such identity. If a nexus is what he is here supposed to be, the laws of the Twelve Tables could not apply; for when a man became nexus with respect to one creditor, he could not become nexus to another; and if he became nexus to several at once, in this case the creditors¹³ must abide¹⁴ by their contract in taking a joint¹⁵ security. This law of the Twelve Tables only applied¹⁶ to the case of a debtor being @igned over by a judicial¹⁷ sentence to several debtors, and it provided for a settlement of their conflicting claims. The precise condition of a nexus has, however, been a subject of much dinussion among scholars. Smith, Dict. Rom. & Gr. Antiq. h. v., and vide Mancipitem.