As indicated in the article, different states have different rules regarding people in same-sex relationships being able to adopt their same-sex partner, and different rules regarding the ability to adopt someone who is older than you (Spado was older than Watson by one year).
Do the family members have a valid appeal? Does the fact that the couple split up in 1992 have any merit on the validity of that appeal? How does Watson’s alleged desire for Spado to receive the inheritance, despite the status of their relationship, impact any potential validity of that appeal?
If Watson and Spado had married and then divorced, Spado would have no claim on the trust’s payout. Spado is not a child of Olive Watson nor a grandchild of Thomas Watson, and would not have been even if she had been born with XY chromosones and been named Patrick and then romantically linked to Olive.
There are plenty of more legitimate instances of same-sex couples being denied the ability to structure their affairs to as to protect their partners. This isn’t one of them.
But they didn’t get married. One of them adopted the other. The law covering inheritance for adopted family members is what applies here, not the law covering inheritance for ex-spouses.
It seems to me that the romantic relationship is neither here nor there. All that matters is whether the adoption was legal and whether there is any valid reason to say that Spado is not a legal heir. I don’t know the answer to that question, but I just wanted to point out that’s it is the adoption which is being challenged, not the romantic relationship. Is there any legal reason why this adoption should have less legal validity than any other?
I’m inclined to agree with Bricker in principle, but I want some more information that is not included in the article. Would Watson have settled for more than $500,000 if the potential inheritance had been off the table? If she had hypothetically been married to a man and was divorcing that man at the time of the settlement, what would’ve been the likely settlement amount?
Hmmm. Existing law at the time the legal relationship between Watson and Spado was effectuated prohibited same-sex marital-style unions (marriage, civil union, domestic parnership, registered hooha, whatever name the legislators have decided to bestow on it). So they proceeded to an adoption relationship.
It has not been the custom of the courts to determine why a parent adopts a child (using those terms in the relationship sense, not the age sense). It may be very valid to ask those questions in the adoption process. But once an adoption is formalized, it becomes a valid familial relationship. I grant that it is an absurdity for two persons in a romantic relationship to use adoption to legalize their union – but that absurdity is one compelled by the nature of the laws, not the innate absurdity of the action. There are two and only two means by which I as a (hypothetical) single person might become related in the eyes of the law to someone I was theretofore not related to – marriage (or the terminologically-distinct equivalent) and adoption. If that relationship is one whereby a marriage is prohibited, Mr. Hobson’s horse is labelled “adoption.”
Are Shodan’s blood relatives now to be permitted to challenge the validity of the adoptions he and his wife went through to make legally valid their desire to take their adoptive children as their own? Some sort of racist, “they’re not our kind” bullshit? Because that’s precisely the precedent that rejecting this situation would result in.
Ms. Spado was duly adopted by Ms. Watson as her daughter. One need not be in favor of Lesbian relationships to recognize that they went through the proper legal forms. Only if the letter Ms. Spado adduces in evidence is fraudulent, and some not-presently-known act renouncing the adoption undertaken by Ms. Watson and effectuated in some court comes to light, should this be regarded as anything other than a legal adoption, undertaken for unusual motives but done in accordance with formal due process as provided for in law, and entitling Ms. Spado to equal claim with all other grandchildren, “natural” or adoptive, of Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Watson.
Yes, and if Mrs. Watson had balls, she would have been Ms. Spado’s grandfather, instead of grandmother. Your hypothetical about their being married and divorced (which in the real world would have been impossible, mind you) has no more to do with the actual situation than the hypothetical that you could have moved to Provincetown MA and run for Mayor on the Democratic ticket twenty years ago. You didn’t, and they didn’t.
What they did do was to use a legal form of creating a familial relationship recognized by the law, adoption, in an odd way. I suspect there are legal means in place to break an adoptive parent-child relationship when circumstances call for doing so. At present we have no evidence that Ms. Watson availed herself of such means, and the one small bit of evidence we do have indicates that she explicitly chose not to.
As is usual in such cases, what this one is about is really greed. The “natural” grandchildren of Thomas Watson et uxor (among whom I sincerely hope there are no adoptive children, who would likewise be disinherited) do not wish to share the proceeds of the trust with Ms. Spado. Who is, by an odd twist of the law, no less a grandchild than they in the eyes of the law.
Adoption exists specifically to create a legal relationship where love (normally of adult for orphaned child) has created a human relationship. Its creative use by a former Lesbian couple to make a legally valid relationship between themselves, when they were prohibited from marrying or similarly instituting a legally recognized union-of-adults, should be honored by the courts.
(It’s interesting that the “Pro-Family” people, having decided to hold up as disreputable all forms of covenanting a marriage save the one they themselves approve of, have now expanded their assault on creating families to decide that adoptions they disapprove of are also invalid. What next: will a couple require permission from their friendly neighbood evangelical Protestant pastor before they can conceive a fetus that will be legally their child?)
I think this case is a little more complicated than that. I have a hard time counting two adults in a long-term romantic relationship the same as an adoptive parent taking charge of a minor child.
Like people who (erroneously, in my opinion) argue that making marriage available to same-sex couples will weaken the institution because “just anybody” will be able to get married, I think that using adoption in this way is an abuse of the legal framework set up to give stability to actual adopted children and their parents. I can’t really fault the women involved here, since they didn’t have another way to provide for each other, but I’d consider this to be a loophole in the adoption law that should be shored up. You know, right after we fix the marriage laws.
This is my feeling too. I personally want the family’s appeal to fail in order to catalyze further discussion of the root issue: these women only attempted to exploit the loophole because they were faced with no other feasible alternative.
Those crazy lawyers who co-owned the dog who killed that woman in San Francisco a few years ago adopted a scary convict who was somehow involved in their dog business. :eek:
I don’t know what to think about this…if the woman adopted a standard bouncing baby boy, would THAT child be entitled to a piece of the action? If so, I cannot see a reason why this adoption would not be a legitimate part of the inheritance. What ARE the laws in Connecticut with regard to adoption?
As far as I know, most states’ incest laws do not only criminalize incest between adults and minors (though I believe many do not mention homosexual relationships). I don’t know if such laws are held to apply to adoptive relationships, as one of the supposed purposes behind them (avoidance of genetic defects) would clearly not be applicable to adoptive relationships, and the avoidance of abuse of power situation also is not applicable where the parties were engaged in the relationship before the adoption. However, if the laws do apply to adoptive relationships, how long do you think it would be before a prosecutor was starting to level charges in situations such as this?
Remembering back to my class on Sexual Orientation and the Law, such situations did come up in discussions, and many states ban adoption if there is not a sufficient age differential present.
The solution here on an overall scale is simple, and that is to permit gay marriage. In this case, there seems to be an argument to be made that, if the abortion is held to be valid, the person should be treated as an estranged child. I don’t know a lot about Wills & Trusts, but I do seem to remember that there is a situation whereby that can make a difference to the distribution of an estate that would otherwise go to all children/grandchildren. I could be totally wrong, though. I learned W&T solely through BarBri.
I don’t see how that would make a difference. If Doper X adopted a child in Chicago and then later lived in Massachusetts, would that nullify that child’s inheritance?
I think the bigger issue is the fact that Spado relinquished all rights to the family dough when the couple split up (according to your cite).
No, the issue is not that they later moved, it’s that they never legally resided in Maine. If Doper X lived in Texas and vacationed in Maine would Doper X legally adopt while on vacation, or back home in Texas?
The adoption in question essentially happened on vacation.
According to impeccable tabloid sources, Prince Whatsisname was going to adopt Anna Nicole so she could be a princess, but Zsa Zsa wouldn’t sign the papers.
They may have decided to do so, but that doesn’t mean that it was valid, any more than if they had gotten a marriage license by misrepresenting the gender of one of them. The judge that approved the adoption did not know the two had a sexual relationship, and that was certainly germane to the question of the motives for and validity of the adoption.
If it was produced by fraud or misrepresentation, then it’s vulnerable to being vacated, just like any other act. An adoption does not become immune to any challenges once it’s complete.
No, that would be a slippery slope argument. One can easily make a principled distinction between the adoption of an adult by another adult when the two are fucking each other, and the adoption of a child by parents whose interests do not extend to fucking that child.
Not for the first time in your posting history am I gald to see you’re not on the judicial bench.
You claim “duly adopted.” In fact, that issue is being litigated right now, and has not been decided.
Even if the adoption itself is found valid, there is plenty of room to sustain Judge Hopper’s finding that this aort of adoption was neither intended or countenanced by Mr. Watson, and remove Ms. Spado from the pool without disinheriting other, more conventional adoptees. And I might point out that THAT ruling has already been made, placing your confident pronouncement in even more erroneous terriory.
My hypothetical addresses the argument that same-sex couples were BY THIS DECISION denied the rights that would innure to opposite-sex couples. If some were to advance this case as an example of the privileges that an opposite-sex couple would have but a same-sex couple does not, my response makes clear that even an opposite-sex couple choosing to marry and then divorce would still be at the same crossroads now, with the ex-spouse ineligible for a share of the trust.
So what? It’s not up to her. A court can dissolve an adoption for reasons that don’t require the consent of either adoptive parent. And one such reason is fraud surrounding the circumstances of adoption.
No. There is no particular reason that more conventional adoptive children wouold be disinherited. I do agree that greed is a motivating factor here, however.
No, it shouldn’t.
Legislatures should offer same-sex marriage in their states. The courts should apply the law as it is intended by the legislature.
There have been many instances of one adult adopting another, customarily for inheritance purposes where, e.g., leaving one’s estate to one particular nephew would be challengeable, but if the testator has adopted his nephew as his own (and only) child legally, it becomes incontestable, or effectively so.
Internationally, it might be worth noting that the current King of Sweden owes his throne to an adult adoption: the childless Karl XIII Vasa, last of the Vasas save a maiden sister and his insane and dethroned predecessor and nephew Gustav IV, adopted Jean-Baptiste Jules Bernadotte, Marechal de France, an experienced general with a wife and child, and some years later he succeeded to the throne as Karl XIV Johann, first of the House of Bernadotte, his son following him as Oskar I. The present king, Karl XVI Gustav, is their lineal descendant.
Dropping in to say (a) my heart is with you, Poly, but I fear my head (stuffed with years of reading law) has departed for Bricker’s camp; and (b) this is such a delightful turn of phrase.
Can anyone cite what the adoption laws are in Massachusetts? Is there something specific that would not allow lovers to adopt one another for inheritance purposes?
Agree in both cases. If a sexual relationship between the adopter and adoptee is indeed relevant to an adoption decision (and I have no trouble believing that it is) and the judge in the case was indeed unaware of the sexual relationship between Spado and Watson, then the adoption is invalid.