Court Opinion

ID: 9567982
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 19:59:27.218651+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T10:24:07.075245
License: Public Domain

Sears-Collins, Justice,
dissenting.
I disagree with the majority’s holding that O’Neal’s claim for equitable adoption is defeated by the fact that her paternal aunt was not a person designated by law as one having the authority to consent to O’Neal’s adoption.
1. In Crawford v. Wilson, 139 Ga. 654, 658 (78 SE 30) (1913), the doctrine of equitable or virtual adoption was recognized for the first time in Georgia. Relying on the equitable principle that “equity considers that done which ought to have been done,” id. at 659; see OCGA § 23-1-8, we held that
an agreement to adopt a child, so as to constitute the child an heir at law on the death of the person adopting, performed on the part of the child, is enforceable upon the death of the person adopting the child as to property which is undisposed of by will.
*854Id. We held that although the death of the adopting parents precluded a literal enforcement of the contract, equity would “enforce the contract by decreeing that the child is entitled to the fruits of a legal adoption.” Id. In Crawford, we noted that the full performance of the agreement by the child was sufficient to overcome an objection that the agreement was unenforceable because it violated the statute of frauds. Id. at 658. We further held that
[w]here one takes an infant into his home upon a promise to adopt such as his own child, and the child performs all the duties growing out of the substituted relationship of parent and child, rendering years of service, companionship, and obedience to the foster parent, upon the faith that such foster parent stands in loco parentis, and that upon his death the child will sustain the legal relationship to his estate of a natural child, there is equitable reason that the child may appeal to a court of equity to consummate, so far as it may be possible, the foster parent’s omission of duty in the matter of formal adoption.
Id. at 660.
Although the majority correctly states the current rule in Georgia that a contract to adopt may not be specifically enforced unless the contract was entered by a person with the legal authority to consent to the adoption of the child, Crawford did not expressly establish such a requirement, and I think the cases cited by the majority that have established this requirement are in error.
Instead, I would hold that where a child has fully performed the alleged contract over the course of many years or a lifetime and can sufficiently establish the existence of the contract to adopt, equity should enforce the contract over the objection of the adopting parents’ heirs that the contract is unenforceable because the person who consented to the adoption did not have the legal authority to do so.3 Several reasons support this conclusion.
First, in such cases, the adopting parents and probably their heirs know of the defect in the contract and yet voice no objection to the contract while the child fully performs the contract and the adopting parents reap the benefits thereof. Under these circumstances, to hold *855that the contract is unenforceable after the child has performed is to permit a virtual fraud upon the child and should not be countenanced in equity. See 2 Corbin on Contracts, p. 469, § 429 (1950). Equity does not permit such action with regard to contracts that are initially unenforceable because they violate the statute of frauds, but instead recognizes that the full performance of the contract negates its initial unenforceability and renders it enforceable in equity. See 2 Corbin, supra, §§ 420, 421, 429, 432; Harp v. Bacon, 222 Ga. 478, 482-483 (1) (150 SE2d 655) (1966). Moreover, the purpose of requiring consent by a person with the legal authority to consent to an adoption, where such a person exists, is to protect that person, the child, and the adopting parents. See generally Clark, The Law of Domestic Relations, Vol. 2, Sec. 21.11 (2nd ed. 1987). However, as equitable adoption cases do not arise until the death of the adopting parents, the interests of the person with the consent to adopt and of the adopting parents are not in jeopardy. On the other hand, the interests of the child are unfairly and inequitably harmed by insisting upon the requirement that a person with the consent to adopt had to have been a party to the contract. That this legal requirement is held against the child is particularly inequitable because the child, the course of whose life is forever changed by such contracts, was unable to act to insure the validity of the contract when the contract was made.
Furthermore, where there is no person with the legal authority to consent to the adoption, such as in the present case, the only reason to insist that a person be appointed the child’s legal guardian before agreeing to the contract to adopt would be for the protection of the child. Yet, by insisting upon this requirement after the adopting parents’ deaths, this Court is harming the very person that the requirement would protect.
For all the foregoing reasons, equity ought to intervene on the child’s behalf in these types of cases, and require the performance of the contract if it is sufficiently proven. See OCGA § 23-1-8. In this case, I would thus not rule against O’Neal’s claim for specific performance solely on the ground that her paternal aunt did not have the authority to consent to the adoption.
2. Moreover, basing the doctrine of equitable adoption in contract theory has come under heavy criticism, for numerous reasons. See Clark, supra at 676-678; Rein, Relatives by Blood, Adoption, and Association: Who Should Get What and Why (The Impact of Adoptions, Adult Adoptions, and Equitable Adoptions on Intestate Succession and Class Gifts), 37 Vand. L. Rev. 710, 770-775, 784-786 (1984). For instance, as we acknowledged in Wilson, supra, 139 Ga. at 659, the contract to adopt is not being specifically enforced as the adopting parents are dead; for equitable reasons we are merely placing the child in a position that he or she would have been in if he or she had *856been adopted. See Rein at 774. Moreover, it is problematic whether these contracts are capable of being enforced in all respects during the child’s infancy. See Rein at 773-774; Clark at 678. Furthermore, because part of the consideration for these contracts is the child’s performance thereunder, the child is not merely a third-party beneficiary of a contract between the adults involved but is a party thereto. Yet, a child is usually too young to know of or understand the contract, and it is thus difficult to find a meeting of the minds between the child and the adopting parents and the child’s acceptance of the contract. Rein at 772-773, 775.1 agree with these criticisms arid would abandon the contract basis for equitable adoption in favor of the more flexible and equitable theory advanced by the foregoing authorities. That theory focuses not on the fiction of whether there has been a contract to adopt but on the relationship between the adopting parents and the child and in particular whether the adopting parents have led the child to believe that he or she is a legally adopted member of their family. Rein at 785-787; Clark at 678, 682.
Decided February 7, 1994
Reconsideration denied February 25, 1994.
Charles W. Bell, for appellant.
Richard D. Phillips, for appellee.
3. Because the majority fails to honor the maxim that “[ejquity considers that done which ought to be done,” § 23-1-8, and follows a rule that fails to protect a person with superior equities, I dissent.
I am authorized to state that Justice Hunstein concurs in the result reáched by this dissent.

 I am in favor of the requirement that private adoption contracts be entered by someone with the legal authority to consent to the adoption of a child, as such a person is probably more likely to look after the child’s best interests than someone who does not have such authority. However, the fact that such a person did not initially consent to the adoption should not be an absolute bar to an action for equitable adoption. Instead, the focus in equitable adoptions should be on the equities that arise from the time the agreement is made to the time the equitable adoption action is brought.