This rich fuck John Goodman (not the actor, but some kind of trust fund baby) killed a guy in a drunk driving accident. He’s been convicted of manslaughter, and he has apparently now settled with the parents of the victim to the tune of 46 million dollars. Somewhere in this process, I don’t know exactly when, claims were made that he legally adopted his 43 year old girlfriend in order to shelter some of his assets from a judgement. His children are now suing him too, because this adoption apparently gives the girlfriend a share in their trust fund.
I did look around and find a few other similar stories, but none explained the theory how or why an adoption would shield his assets.
First off, not only is his name John Goodman, but the victim’s name is Scott Wilson.
The reason the money is shielded from the judgment is because money tied up in trust funds can’t be touched by the lawsuits. So by adopting his girlfriend and making her a ‘trust fund baby’ so to speak, he get’s to keep any money he puts in her trust fund.
ETA, you can see it on the first page of this PDF where it says that the trust fund money for his children can’t be counted as part of his net worth. So he could just stick more of his money in his kid’s trust funds, but then he loses it. Better (for him) to adopt her, set her up with a trust fund and stick a big chunk of money in there. I’d imagine there’s some clause in there that will release the money fairly soon.
Rather notoriously ( at least in my neck of the woods ), then lawyers Robert Noel and Marjorie Knoller adopted a 38-year old imprisoned-for-life white supremacist named Paul “Cornfed” Schneider. This days before the fatal mauling of Diane Whipple by Noel, Knoller and ( de facto ) Schneider’s Presa Canario dog. When you start digging into the details of the whole mess, it was a truly bizarre and sordid tale.
It would be pretty much immediate. The trust fund was set up to give each of Goodman’s children an equal share of the payments after their 35th birthday. Goodman’s two natural children are not yet 35 so they haven’t collected anything. But his new “daughter” is old enough to start collecting.
And on another issue which nobody’s mentioned yet, Florida does have a law against incest. However, the way the law is written only prohibits sex between people who are biologically related.
There are some restrictions in some jurisdictions (e.g., you cannot adopt as your children someone with whom you intend a sexual relationship), but this is not the case everywhere. Generally, adult adoption is not problematic, and it usually is not pursued for questionable ends. Instead, it comes up when, say, a stepfather adopts the adult children of his new wife. If all parties concerned, stepdad, the adoptees, and mom, agree, I see no reason why the state should impose an impediment to the adoption.
There are also some restrictions on intra-familial tort litigation, but I’m not sure of its applicability here. Generally, divestiture of assets to close family members in order to avoid placing them within the reach of creditors (including judgment creditors) can be undone as a fraudulent conveyance.
Adult adoptees are usually not included as testamentary trust beneficiaries if the adoption post-dates the will. That is, if your parent says “$10 million in trust to my grandchildren per stirpes, corpus to distribute when they reach 30” and you adopt an adult after the will is probated but before the corpus of the trust is distributed, your adult adoptee will not be included in the class of the trust’s beneficiaries. This is generally known as the “stranger to the adoption” rule.
So, there’s lots more litigation in the offing.
I hasten to add this is all riffing, and I’ve done no specific research into the case.