{"id":476,"date":"2016-07-29T21:18:00","date_gmt":"2016-07-29T21:18:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/?p=476"},"modified":"2023-12-15T22:00:44","modified_gmt":"2023-12-15T22:00:44","slug":"heirs-under-intestacy-statute-include-adopted-children","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/2016\/07\/29\/heirs-under-intestacy-statute-include-adopted-children\/","title":{"rendered":"Heirs under intestacy statute include adopted children"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>In a decision one might think was unnecessary today, the Maine Supreme Judicial Court ruled that the &#8220;children&#8221; who inherit under state intestacy statutes include adopted children.\u00a0<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"http:\/\/www.courts.maine.gov\/opinions_orders\/supreme\/lawcourt\/2016\/16me26fi.pdf\" class=\"mtli_attachment mtli_pdf\" target=\"_blank\">Fiduciary Trust Co. v. Wheeler,\u00a0<\/a>132 A.3d 1178, 2016 ME 26 (Me. 2016). The issue was raised because an earlier court decision interpreting the decedent&#8217;s will had held that a separate clause leaving property to the decedent&#8217;s &#8220;issue&#8221; went to biological children (in this case grandchildren) only. This clause did not affect another clause, at issue here, that referred to the state&#8217;s intestacy statute to govern distribution of property upon termination of the trust.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"taxonomy-category wp-block-post-terms\"><a href=\"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/category\/marital-property\/\" rel=\"tag\">Marital Property<\/a><span class=\"wp-block-post-terms__separator\">, <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/category\/wills-and-inheritance\/\" rel=\"tag\">Wills and Inheritance<\/a><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In a decision one might think was unnecessary today, the Maine Supreme Judicial Court ruled that the &#8220;children&#8221; who inherit under state intestacy statutes include adopted children.\u00a0Fiduciary Trust Co. v. Wheeler,\u00a0132 A.3d 1178, 2016 ME 26 (Me. 2016). The issue was raised because an earlier court decision interpreting the decedent&#8217;s will had held that a separate clause leaving property to the decedent&#8217;s &#8220;issue&#8221; went to biological children (in this case grandchildren) only. This clause did not affect another clause, at issue here, that referred to the state&#8217;s intestacy statute to govern distribution of property upon termination of the trust.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[65,38],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-476","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-marital-property","category-wills-and-inheritance"],"featured_image_src":null,"featured_image_src_square":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"jsinger","author_link":"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/author\/jsinger\/"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=476"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}