Opinion ID: 2519926
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Heading: Criteria for Equitable Adoption

Text: In its essence, the doctrine of equitable adoption allows a person who was accepted and treated as a natural or adopted child, and as to whom adoption typically was promised or contemplated but never performed, to share in inheritance of the foster parents' property. The parents of a child turn him over to foster parents who agree to care for him as if he were their own child. Perhaps they also agree to adopt him. They do care for him, support him, educate him, and treat him in all respects as if he were their child, but they never adopt him. Upon their death he seeks to inherit their property on the theory that he should be treated as if he had been adopted. Many courts would honor his claim, at least under some circumstances, characterizing the case as one of equitable adoption, or adoption by estoppel, or virtual adoption, or specific enforcement of a contract to adopt. (Clark, The Law of Domestic Relations in the United States (2d ed.1988) § 20.9, p. 925.) The doctrine is widely applied to allow inheritance from the adoptive parent: at least 27 jurisdictions have so applied the doctrine, while only 10 have declined to recognize it in that context. (Annot., Modern Status of Law as to Equitable Adoption or Adoption by Estoppel (1980) 97 A.L.R.3d 347, § 3.) [2] A California court first recognized the doctrine, albeit in the atypical context of inheritance through the adoptive parent, in Estate of Grace (1948) 88 Cal.App.2d 956, 200 P.2d 189. A California couple had taken custody of and raised a Texas girl, Edna Grace, having recorded in Texas a statement that they `hereby adopt' the child, who was to be their heir and `a member of our family, with all the rights and privileges as if born to us.' ( Id. at p. 957, 200 P.2d 189.) Although Texas adoption law at that time did not recognize inheritance from an adoptive grandparent through an adoptive parent ( id. at pp. 959-960, 200 P.2d 189), the California court upheld Grace's daughter's entitlement to inherit from her adoptive grandparents as a matter of contract. [3] The parents had offered to adopt Grace and make her a full member of their family, and [t]he child, by living with them as a member of the family, accepted the offer, creating a contract concluded and performed in California. ( Estate of Grace, supra, at p. 962, 200 P.2d 189.) Quoting from a treatise, the appellate court noted that `the courts, in their effort to protect and promote the welfare of the child, have given effect to a contract to adopt, where it has been fully performed on the part of the child, although it was invalid under the laws where it was made.' ( Id. at p. 963, 200 P.2d 189.) This court decided its only case relating to equitable adoption nine years later. ( Estate of Radovich, supra, 48 Cal.2d 116, 308 P.2d 14.) The question before us was not whether the child could inherit as an equitable adoptee  a final superior court decree established that he could  but the child's status, for purposes of inheritance taxation, as either the decedent's adopted child or a stranger in blood to the decedent. ( Id. at pp. 118-119, 308 P.2d 14.) The majority took the former view, but its opinion rested on the in rem character of the superior court's probate decree and did not address the contours of the equitable adoption doctrine. ( Id. at pp. 119-124, 308 P.2d 14.) Justice Schauer's dissenting opinion, however, addressed the equitable adoption doctrine at some length, concluding the child took solely by virtue of an unperformed contract of adoption and thus as a stranger in blood. ( Estate of Radovich, supra, 48 Cal.2d at pp. 129-135, 308 P.2d 14 (dis. opn. of Schauer, J.).) Citing sister-state authority, Justice Schauer explained: When the child takes property in such a case it is as a purchaser by virtue of the contract [citation] and by way of damages or specific performance [citations]. ... The child shares in the estate of the deceased foster parent as though his own child but not as such. In order to do justice and equity, as far as possible, to one who, though having filled the place of a natural born child, through inadvertence or fault has not been legally adopted, the court enforces a contract under which the child is entitled to property, declaring that as a consideration on the part of the foster parents a portion of their property will pass on their death to the child. ( Id. at p. 130, 308 P.2d 14.) Although expressed in a dissenting opinion, Justice Schauer's explanation of the doctrine has been widely cited and relied upon by the Courts of Appeal. Estate of Rivolo (1961) 194 Cal.App.2d 773, 15 Cal.Rptr. 268 presented the issue in the straightforward context of intestate succession from the adoptive parent. The child was an eight-year-old orphan when the foster parents took her in and told [her] that she would live with them and be their little girl, an arrangement she said pleased her. ( Id. at p. 775, 15 Cal.Rptr. 268.) The foster parents took the child to the courthouse, where they took out letters of guardianship but told the child she was being adopted. Thereafter they referred to her as their adopted daughter. As a child, the daughter helped them in their business, and even after her marriage they remained exceedingly close. ( Id. at p. 776, 15 Cal.Rptr. 268.) Citing Estate of Radovich, supra, 48 Cal.2d 116, 308 P.2d 14, the Rivolo court held it well established that equity will specifically enforce an oral contract to adopt and found that the record establishes the existence of a contract of adoption and respondent's part performance thereof by clear, convincing and unequivocal evidence. It is uncontroverted that the respondent was at all times regarded and treated as the adopted daughter of the Rivolos; that they told her and others on numerous occasions that she was legally adopted and would be their sole heir. ( Estate of Rivolo, supra, 194 Cal.App.2d at p. 777, 15 Cal.Rptr. 268.) [U]nder the circumstances, equity demands recognition of her lifelong status as an adopted child of Frank Rivolo and her inheritance rights [citations]. ( Id. at p. 778, 15 Cal.Rptr. 268.) Estate of Wilson (1980) 111 Cal.App.3d 242, 168 Cal.Rptr. 533 also presented the question of intestate succession from the adoptive parent. The child, born in a home for unwed mothers, was placed with foster parents who petitioned to adopt him. The adoption petition was dismissed, however, because the natural mother's consent could not be obtained; although the court record refers to an abandonment petition ... to be filed, the foster parents did not pursue that remedy and apparently made no further efforts to adopt. They nonetheless told the child he was adopted and treated him in all respects as their son; their relationship remained warm and familial until the deaths of both parents. ( Id. at pp. 248-249, 168 Cal.Rptr. 533.) Following both Estate of Rivolo and Estate of Radovich, the appellate court regarded the issue as one of the right of an equitably adopted child to inherit by virtue of contract ( Estate of Wilson, supra, at p. 247, 168 Cal.Rptr. 533) and found substantial evidence that, according to the above-noted authority, the Wilsons and Keith had entered into a contract of adoption which was faithfully adhered to by them ( id. at p. 249, 168 Cal.Rptr. 533). In Estate of Bauer (1980) 111 Cal.App.3d 554, 168 Cal.Rptr. 743, an inheritance tax case, the court found insufficient evidence of equitable adoption  the child did not live with the asserted parents either as a minor or for any extended time as an adult, and did not assume any duties normally associated with a parent-child relationship ( id. at p. 559, 168 Cal.Rptr. 743)  but aptly summarized the doctrine as it had developed in California: [E]quitable adoption requires some form of agreement to adopt, coupled with subsequent objective conduct indicating mutual recognition of an adoptive parent and child relationship to such an extent that in equity and good conscience an adoption should be deemed to have taken place. ( Id. at p. 560, 168 Cal.Rptr. 743.) In Mingo v. Heckler (9th Cir.1984) 745 F.2d 537, the federal court expanded on Bauer's agreement-plus-conduct analysis, distilling from the California decisions factors tending to show mutual recognition of a parent and child relationship: [T]he adoptee lived with the adoptive parent for a number of years; the adoptee assumed the adoptive parent's surname; the adoptive parent told the adoptee that he or she was adopted; the adoptive parent publicly acknowledged the adoptee as his or her child; the adoptee considered and conducted himself or herself as a natural child; the adoptee worked or performed services for the adoptive parent; and the adoptive parent attempted legally to adopt or obtained guardianship papers for the child. Because the factors are merely examples of the type of conduct demonstrating an adoptive parent and child relationship, the claimant need not demonstrate that she satisfies every factor. ( Id. at p. 539.) The court held that the child, who had lived with her grandmother and the grandmother's cohabitant from infancy, was entitled to Social Security benefits as the cohabitant's equitably adopted child. ( Id. at pp. 538-540.) As reflected in this summary, California decisions have explained equitable adoption as the specific enforcement of a contract to adopt. Yet it has long been clear that the doctrine, even in California, rested less on ordinary rules of contract law than on considerations of fairness and intent for, as Justice Schauer put it, the child should have been adopted and would have been but for the decedent's inadvertence or fault. ( Estate of Radovich, supra, 48 Cal.2d at pp. 134, 130, 308 P.2d 14 (dis. opn. of Schauer, J.), italics omitted.) In the earliest case, Estate of Grace, the court quoted a New Mexico case explaining why specific performance was an unrealistic description of equitable adoption: `A specific performance of a contract to adopt is impossible after the death of the parties who gave the promise. Equity was driven to the fiction that there had been an adoption. That fiction being indulged, the case was not one of specific performance.' ( Estate of Grace, supra, 88 Cal.App.2d at pp. 964-965, 200 P.2d 189, quoting Wooley v. Shell Petroleum Corporation (1935) 39 N.M. 256, 45 P.2d 927, 931-932.) In both Estate of Rivolo, supra, 194 Cal.App.2d 773, 15 Cal.Rptr. 268, and Estate of Wilson, supra, 111 Cal.App.3d 242, 168 Cal.Rptr. 533, moreover, the contracts purportedly being enforced were made between foster parents and their minor charges, yet neither court addressed the children's capacity to contract, suggesting, again, that the contract served mainly as evidence of the parties' intent, rather than as an enforceable legal basis for transmission of property. [4] Bean urges that equitable adoption be viewed not as specific enforcement of a contract to adopt, but as application of an equitable, restitutionary remedy he has identified as quasi-contract or, as his counsel emphasized at oral argument, as an application of equitable estoppel principles. While we have found no decisions articulating a quasi-contract theory, courts in several states have, instead of or in addition to the contract rationale, analyzed equitable adoption as arising from a broader and vaguer equitable principle of estoppel. (Clark, The Law of Domestic Relations in the United States, supra, at p. 926.) [5] Bean argues Mr. Ford's conduct toward him during their long and close relationship estops Ford's estate or heirs at law from denying his status as an equitably adopted child. For several reasons, we conclude the California law of equitable adoption, which has rested on contract principles, does not recognize an estoppel arising merely from the existence of a familial relationship between the decedent and the claimant. The law of intestate succession is intended to carry out `the intent a decedent without a will is most likely to have had.' ( Estate of Griswold (2001) 25 Cal.4th 904, 912, 108 Cal.Rptr.2d 165, 24 P.3d 1191.) The existence of a mutually affectionate relationship, without any direct expression by the decedent of an intent to adopt the child or to have him or her treated as a legally adopted child, sheds little light on the decedent's likely intent regarding distribution of property. While a person with whom the decedent had a close, caring and enduring relationship may often be seen as more deserving of inheritance than the heir or heirs at law, whose personal relationships with the decedent may have been, as they were here, attenuated, equitable adoption in California is neither a means of compensating the child for services rendered to the parent nor a device to avoid the unjust enrichment of other, more distant relatives who will succeed to the estate under the intestacy statutes. Absent proof of an intent to adopt, we must follow the statutory law of intestate succession. In addition, a rule looking to the parties' overall relationship in order to do equity in a given case, rather than to particular expressions of intent to adopt, would necessarily be a vague and subjective one, inconsistently applied, in an area of law where consistent, bright-line rules ( Estate of Furia, supra, 103 Cal.App.4th at p. 6, 126 Cal.Rptr.2d 384) are greatly needed. Such a broad scope for equitable adoption would leave open to competing claims the estate of any foster parent or stepparent who treats a foster child or stepchild lovingly and on an equal basis with his or her natural or legally adopted children. A broad doctrine of equitable adoption would also render section 6454, in practice, a virtual nullity, since children meeting the familial-relationship criteria of that statute would necessarily be equitable adoptees as well. While a California equitable adoption claimant need not prove all the elements of an enforceable contract to adopt, therefore, we conclude the claimant must demonstrate the existence of some direct expression, on the decedent's part, of an intent to adopt the claimant. This intent may be shown, of course, by proof of an unperformed express agreement or promise to adopt. But it may also be demonstrated by proof of other acts or statements directly showing that the decedent intended the child to be, or to be treated as, a legally adopted child, such as an invalid or unconsummated attempt to adopt, the decedent's statement of his or her intent to adopt the child, or the decedent's representation to the claimant or to the community at large that the claimant was the decedent's natural or legally adopted child. (See, e.g., Estate of Rivolo, supra, 194 Cal.App.2d at p. 775, 15 Cal.Rptr. 268 [parents who orally promised child she would be their little girl later told her and others they had adopted her]; Estate of Wilson, supra, 111 Cal.App.3d at p. 248, 168 Cal.Rptr. 533 [petition to adopt filed but dismissed for lack of natural mother's consent]; Estate of Reid (1978) 80 Cal.App.3d 185, 188, 145 Cal.Rptr. 451 [written agreement with adult child].) Thus, in California the doctrine of equitable adoption is a relatively narrow one, applying only to those who `though having filled the place of a natural born child, through inadvertence or fault [have] not been legally adopted,' [where] the evidence establishes an intent to adopt.  ( Estate of Furia, supra, 103 Cal.App.4th at p. 5, 126 Cal.Rptr.2d 384, italics added.) In addition to a statement or act by the decedent unequivocally evincing the decedent's intent to adopt, the claimant must show the decedent acted consistently with that intent by forming with the claimant a close and enduring familial relationship. [6] That is, in addition to a contract or other direct evidence of the intent to adopt, the evidence must show objective conduct indicating mutual recognition of an adoptive parent and child relationship to such an extent that in equity and good conscience an adoption should be deemed to have taken place. ( Estate of Bauer, supra, 111 Cal.App.3d at p. 560, 168 Cal.Rptr. 743.)