Expanding the Definition of Child in Intestacy Laws for Caregiver Grandparents

Neta Sozonov has published her note entitled Expanding the Statutory Definition of “Child” in Intestacy Law: A Just Solution for the Inheritance Difficulties Grandparent Caregivers’ Grandchildren Currently Face, 17 Elder L.J. 401 (2010).

A summary of the article is below:

Grandparents taking on a parental role in raising their grandchildren is a growing trend, and some grandparents assume that a grandchild who they have reared as they would their own child would be entitled to a share of their inheritance upon their death. However, without a will, inheritance rights are controlled by intestacy law, which does not recognize the grandparent caregivers’ grandchildren as their heirs. Instead, the grandparent’s inheritance passes to the deceased’s spouse or children. Further, many grandparent caregivers neither create a will nor formally adopt their grandchild because of the substantial costs involved. This Note examines the effect that current intestacy law has on those raised by grandparent caregivers. The Note discusses the currently existing equitable adoption doctrine, which protects the inheritance rights of an individual who was not the decedent’s “child” as defined in intestacy law, but nonetheless had a parent-child relationship with the decedent. The author recommends legislatively amending intestacy statutes to incorporate equitably adopted grandchildren of grandparent caregivers into the definition of “child,” giving these grandchildren equal inheritance rights to those of biological or adopted children.