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Loading ...Maine court upholds IBM heir’s adoption of lover
07.24.2009 1:23pm EDT
(Portland, Maine) Maine’s highest court has given a legal victory to a woman who stands to stake a claim to a share of one of America’s premier business fortunes thanks to her adoption by her lesbian partner.
The Maine Supreme Judicial Court on Thursday overturned a 2008 lower court decision that annulled the adoption.At issue was 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 North Haven. Watson was the daughter of the late Thomas Watson Jr., who built IBM into a computer giant.
The relationship ended a year after the adoption. Thomas Watson’s heirs challenged the adoption in court in 2005.
Lawyers say the case now moves to a Connecticut probate court to determine if Spado is entitled to any of the family trust.
I guess only women do things like this according to one comment maker, meanwhile, two people here said they’d like to be adopted, but I guess only women go after money. What a disgusting stereotype. Thanks for carrying it on!
Meanwhile, what a brilliant plan to make sure your family doesn’t screw over your loved one. If they broke up though, there are most likely things promised that we as outsiders can’t even dream about. Radclyffe Hall would’ve done this if she could to take care of the women that were in her life, lover or not, perhaps that what this woman did.
If she was legally adopted, then she is family, regardless if her ‘relationship’ broke up in ‘92. That’s the way it works. she’s entitled to a piece of the fortune. Now only if she’d give me some…
Patricia Spado should get nothing! They ended their relationship in “92″. She sounds like a money grubbing woman to me. I hope the probate judge tosses her out on the street with nothing.
If they broke up in 92 what makes her think she is entitled to an inheritance? Obviously she was left out of the will. I hope the probate judge does the right thing.
There was no such thing as Maine marriage equality in 2008. That didn’t happen until 2009 and it can’t be in force unless the Maine voters later this year decide to let Maine marriage stand.
Enough signatures were collected to send this to Maine voters this fall. At least Massachusetts has something in place where a constitutional ban had to pass its legislature in 2 different legislative sessions and then head to the voters. Marriage equality is today secure in Massachusetts and in Connecticut where voters said no to a once every 20 year chance to rewrite the CT constitution.
People who don’t live in Maine are now standing on street corners in Maine with one man one woman marriage signs.
I plan to visit Maine in August (even though a non-resident of Maine) and help out with the phone banks there to help Maine residents to keep Maine marriage equality alive on the critical Vote the Maine Marriage Rights Away Day as I call it.
Hopefully the majority of Maine voters will vote no as a message to the referendum on Maine marriage crowd that the game is over, Maine marriage equality is here to stay and time for the non-Maine resident hurtmongers to pack their bags, go home and leave Maine in peace.
This adoption is likely necessary in part because Maine marriage equality didn’t arrive in Maine until this year and it was not entirely predictable that it would pass this year in the legislature but it did. However, again, it is unfortunately currently not available to same sex couples until after the Maine voters have had their say. Hopefully many of the Maine voters will get fed up with all of these out of staters pushing inequality on Maine citizens and will vote no to the fear and hurt mongering and stand up for the rights of all Maine citizens to finally be married to those whom they wish to marry and to quit being “legal strangers to each other” in the eyes of Maine law.
I’m guessing she was adopted because they couldn’t get married?
Maybe Anderson Cooper will adopt me?
wish someone would adopt me!
In order to adopt – wouldn’t Spado have had to be a minor/under 18 in 1991 for it to happen? Lover/child – yes I think something is wrong with the whole thing.
Why does this seem so skeevy? As a Cleveland punk band (think it was the Pink Holes) once said, “My mother/my lover/she’s the one for me!”