This news release is several weeks old; however this is the first I have seen of it. I find this case very interesting, and is a prime example of “be careful what you wish for, you just may get it”.

Olive Watson, daughter of a wealthy computer magnate, adopted her 44-year-old lesbian lover, Patricia Spado, in a Maine courtroom in 1991 to provide her partner with greater financial security.

Fast-forward 16 years. The two have split up and the Watson family is seeking to annul the adoption in a complex legal case that provides a glimpse into efforts by same-sex couples to use adoption laws to establish legal rights including inheritance.

It appears Mrs. Watson has gotten her wish. As a “grandchild” of Thomas Watson Jr., Patricia Spado is now eligible to collect money from trust accounts worth in the millions, which were setup for benefit of the Watson grandchildren.

In order for the adoption to be annulled, the Watson trusts’ lawyers must prove some form of fraud was committed — either in Spado’s statement that she lived in Maine, or that the court was somehow deceived by the adoption proceedings.

I believe the fact that this woman “adopted” a person whom she was having a sexual relationship with is evidence enough that a fraud on the court was committed.

Gay-rights advocates say it illustrates the difficulties homosexuals in the United States face in protecting the financial interest of their partners, defending the use of adoption as a last-ditch effort to provide protections otherwise unavailable to many gay and lesbian couples.

Constitutionally Correct, which is a blog run by The Alliance Defense Fund has an excellent reply to this last paragraph:

I am puzzled by this situation. Exactly what was Watson trying to achieve through this “adoption”? Was Watson thinking about health insurance? Unlikely, since 44 year old children are not typically covered by their parent’s policy. Was Watson concerned about Spado’s access to retirement benefits in the event of Watson’s demise? Again, such benefits are not typically available to an adult child. Was Watson attempting to inject Spado into the family estate planning? Success on that front is yet to be determined; however, if the family wanted Spado to be a part of the estate plan that could have been done quite simply with a codicil to the family’s estate planning documents.

Advocates of homosexual behavior have been quick to point to this bizarre story as evidence of how desperate they are to provide benefits for each other. Such a statement implies that the law does not allow another way for two unmarried people to obtain these benefits, or that the legal barriers to obtaining such benefit are unreasonably burdensome. This, of course, is not true.

There are many ways in which the law permits a person to provide for the financial security of important people in one’s life. The law allows for wills, powers of attorney, life insurance with designated beneficiaries to name but a few. All of these vehicles give anyone the right to pass on estate assets, make medical decisions, gain access to personal records, and give financial security to those we love and respect, even if there is no biological or adoptive relationship. These legal mechanisms are common place and certainly less cumbersome than going through an adoption proceeding.

What is really disturbing here is the willingness to manipulate the traditional concept of adoption without thought to the message conveyed. By manipulating adoption laws, Watson had her 44 year old sex partner legally designated as her child and began what would technically be considered an incestuous relationship. Plain and simple, we have a “mother” in a sexual relationship with her “daughter”. Does advocacy for same-sex behavior require that society discard all social convention? Here it seeks to not only redefine and undermine marriage, but adoptions as well. Where will such a disdain for social convention lead? This case demonstrates how two people were willing to disregard the purpose and design of the law intended to unite children with loving parents in an effort to further their own selfish desires. In reality Watson and Spado used fraud to circumvent a law intended to protect children to create a relationship known to be harmful to children. Certainly in 1991 they understood they had no intention of entering a parent-child relationship as was represented to the court.

Watson’s and Spado’s efforts should raise alarms; and those alarms sound to warn of the unintended consequences that flow from a willingness to manipulate the legal system to destroy honored and tested social conventions. Now that it turns out that Watson and Spado were not as committed to each other as they originally thought, and Spado is seeking to collect money from the estate of the wealthy computer magnate as a “grandchild”, Watson wants to have the adoption annulled. Unlike simply changing a beneficiary on a life insurance policy, making a change to a will, or revoking a power of attorney, the parties are again forcing the state to jump through legal hoops to figure out how to sort out what should have never happened in the first place.

Unfortunately, if the court’s decree the adoption cannot be annulled, and Patricia Spado is entitled to a portion of the trust accounts; it will be the legitimate Watson grandchildren who will suffer in the loss of inheritance which was owed them.