At issue is whether it was legal for a judge to allow Olive Watson
to adopt Patricia Spado in 1991 in Knox County, where the longtime
partners spent several weeks each summer on an island in Penobscot Bay.
Watson was a daughter of Thomas Watson Jr., who took International
Business Machines Corp. from punch cards into electronic computing.
The relationship between Spado and Watson ended a year after the
adoption was approved, and in 2005 -- after Thomas Watson and his wife
had both died -- the adoption was challenged in court by other heirs to
the Watson fortune.
After Thomas Watson and his wife died, their
grandchildren became eligible for cash payouts and Spado claimed the
adoption made her a beneficiary.
The probate judge who granted
the adoption granted the heirs' petition and annulled it on a residency
issue on April 24, but her sealed ruling didn't come to light until an
appeal brief was filed with the state supreme court, the Maine Supreme
Judicial Court. In Maine, adoption records are confidential, even though the women were in their 40s when the adoption took place.
Spado and Olive Watson had lived together for 14 years before their
breakup, spending only five nights apart. Under their separation
agreement, Watson paid her ex-partner about $500,000 in exchange for
relinquishing her claim to certain real estate.
The settlement,
however, was apparently not intended to terminate Spado's rights to
inheritance as a granddaughter. Her court filings contain a letter
signed by Watson after the breakup in which she says: "I shall at no
time initiate any action to revoke or annul my adoption of you."
Gay rights activists say the case shows the lengths to which same-sex
couples would go to ensure a partner's financial security in the days
before they were allowed to form civil unions or to marry.
Olive
Watson and Spado had been living in New York at the time of the
adoption, but that state barred the adoption of a homosexual partner.
Maine law required that the adoptee had to "live" in the state and the
adopting parent had to "reside" there, but the state's adoption law
does not specifically define either term. During their 14 years
together, Spado and Watson spent several weeks each summer at Watson's
home at her family's compound on North Haven, known as Oak Hill.
In their legal appeal brief, Spado's lawyers argue against annulling an
adoption that had been allowed to stand for so long on the basis of
undefined domicile requirements.
"Most disturbing, this
challenge can come not just in a direct appeal, but at any time, even
decades later, in a collateral attack long after final judgment and
longstanding reliance on the adoption," the brief stated.
Even
though the heirs reached their goal of annulling the adoption, they
also are appealing in a bid to broaden the foundation of their case.
Their attorney, Stephen Hanscom, plans to argue that the adoption
should also have been annulled on other grounds: that it was obtained
by two partners seeking to manufacture inheritance rights and that they
did not intend to establish a normal parent-child relationship.
Hanscom plans to file his legal brief at the end of the month.
The Maine Supreme Judicial Court is likely to hear arguments on the appeals this fall. |
şehir değiştir
