Reversed Again

A year later, New York’s highest court reversed and held that Elizabeth was not entitled to any share of the two trusts.

In its ruling against Elizabeth, the Court of Appeals cited a 1985 case, Matter of Best that relied upon strong public policy considerations in its conclusion that a non-marital child adopted out of the family by strangers did not presumptively share in a class gift to the biological parent’s descendants under a trust established by the child’s biological grandmother.

The court emphasized the public policy considerations underlying Best of “fully assimilating the adopted child into the adoptive family and . . . the importance of keeping adoption records confidential.”

The court also expressed concern regarding the “lurking possibility” of “secret out-of-wedlock” children compromising the finality of judicial verdicts. Whereas, in this case, Elizabeth proactively intervened in the trustee’s accounting action, in other cases, the family might not know of the adopted child, thereby placing an “onerous” burden on a trustee to search out unknown potential beneficiaries.

The court said its ruling did not depend on Elizabeth’s status as a non-marital child and therefore did not implicate any equal protection concerns. It also said that to side with the appellate court would create two classes of adopted persons: those that could inherit from both biological and adoptive parents because the instrument was executed prior to 1964 when state law changed, and those cut off from the biological family because the instrument was executed after that date.