Suppose a wealthy single mother of a toddler child dies.
The mother’s will is obsolete and/or ambiguous.
The putative father denies paternity and refuses to submit to a paternity test.
The mother has no relatives who are fit to be parents, nor who want to.
While a team of lawyers hash out the particulars, someone has to mind the little tyke. And even then, someone needs to mind her until she turns 18 when, if any of her mother’s money is left, she will come in to the money.
In short, has anything like this ever happened? In cases where a deceased has means to provide for his/her orphaned child but no successor guardian is appointed, does the child still go into the foster care system?
Assume for the sake of this discussion that this happened in the US, and not in, say, a small Caribbean island nation.
And by the way, who IS taking care of Anna Nicole’s daughter?
Who, incidentally, is not denying paternity, as in your example. He’s just refusing to submit to a test that could give validation to the other claimants.
And note that he doesn’t say he’s the biological father, just that he’s the father. And under Bahamian law, the man listed on the birth certificate is the legal father, regardless of which sperm swam up which fallopian tube. Which is probably why Stern dragged ANS to the Bahamas in the first place.
OK, putting aside the HKS/ANS issues, my original question remains: have there been cases where an orphaned millionaire child was put into foster care due to 1) no potential successor guardians and 2) ignorance of the father’s identity?
The egg comes down the fallopian tube and should be sitting in the uterus when a sperm meets it. If the egg gets fertilized in the f-tube, it’s called an ectopic pregnancy and is life-threatening to the mother, and the fetus is not viable.
Wrong. If the egg implants in the wall of the fallopian tube, it’s an ectopic pregnancy. I seem to recall fertilization normally happening in the F-tube and then the fertilized egg continuing its leisurely sail down the tube to implant in the uterine wall. But I’ll await an expert to confirm or correct that.
More to the point of the OP, though: in medieval times, it was a common practice for Lord Greystoke (the real one, not Tarzan) or the Earl of Warwick or Norfolk to die leaving only an heiress, who became the ward of the King until she came of age and was married off, usually to someone the King wanted to reward with lands and such.
The sperm and egg usually fuse at the infundibulum, just outside the ovary and just inside the fallopian tube.
This way, by the time the zygote gets to the uterus, it has developed far along enough to be able to implant.
If it is not fertilized until it reaches the uterus, it’s not generally developed enough to implant before it is swept away.
If it implants early in the fallopian tube, then an ectopic pregnancy can result. But the fertilization should occur in the upper fallopian tube.
Occasionally, the fertilization will take place after the egg leaves the ovary, but before it enters the fallopian tube. Sometimes the zygote wanders on off and implants on the abdominal viscera. Rarely, one of these ‘abdominal’ pregnancies is viable.
You might want to google Gloria Vanderbilt. The story of her childhood fits some, though not all, of your criteria. GB was an heiress whose father died when she was an infant. Her mother flitted about in glamorous cafe society and paid little attention to the child. Eventually, the courts declared the mother an unfit parent, effectively making Gloria an orphan. She was not, however, placed into the foster care system - an aunt was named her guardian.
Miss Smith wasn’t a millionaire, for what it’s worth. While her suit over her late husband’s estate will probably continue, and the 9th circuit might eventually give Smith’s heirs something, that’s all conjecture at this point. Smith’s Supreme Court case grew out of her filing for bankrupcy in California, and she still has judgements against her there and in Texas totalling millions of dollars. There are other outstanding cases against her, including the matter of the $900,000 home she was living in when she died. I’m pretty sure that at the time of her death, Smith’s personal financial ledger was very much in the red.
On top of that, I’m not sure how Smith’s daughter could become a ward of the state unless court-ordered DNA testing takes place and none of the claimants actually turns out to be the father.
