Succession Rights of Adopted Adults

Peter T. Wendel (Professor of Law, Pepperdine University School of Law) recently published his article entitled The Succession Rights of Adopted Adults: Trying to Fit a Square Peg Into a Round Hole, 43 Creighton L. Rev. 815 (2010). The conclusion is below:

Inheritance rights constitute an irrebuttable presumed intent based on a presumed relationship arising out of certain familial paradigms. Many have criticized this approach as needlessly status based at the expense of individual intent. While admittedly true at the normative level, at the practical level the alternative-a case-by-case, open-ended investigation into a decedent’s intent-is prohibitively expensive and opens the door too much for the potential for fraud. Nevertheless improvements short of a pure functional approach can be made to the intestate scheme and the law of succession by identifying more familial paradigms and tailoring the presumed intent associated with the underlying relationships more closely to the probable intent of the parties. By recognizing exceptions to the classic adoption rule for stepparent/foster parent adoptions, post-death adoptions, and in-family adoptions, the law is moving in that direction. Similarly, the law of inheritance and succession rights should recognize an exception from the classic adoption rule for adult adoptions. Doing so would promote the typical decedent’s intent, the primary goal of the intestate scheme, while simultaneously reducing litigation with respect to an adopted adult’s succession rights under the testamentary instruments of others.