Court Opinion

ID: 9860144
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 23:12:09.887102+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T11:18:19.995640
License: Public Domain

PRESIDING JUSTICE INGLIS, dissenting: I respectfully dissent from that portion of the majority opinion prohibiting adopteds from taking under the trust. In my view, the 1989 statute requiring clear and convincing evidence of an intent to exclude adopteds in an instrument executed at any time mandates that the adopteds share in the trust in this case. I agree that the term “descendants” ordinarily meant only blood kin in 1926, when the trust was executed. If we were construing the trust under normal circumstances, with words to be given their “plain and ordinary” meaning (Feder v. Luster (1973), 54 Ill. 2d 6, 11), adopteds would not take under the trust. However, the 1989 statute changed the prism through which we must examine the trust’s language. The trust’s use of the terms “descendants” and “per stirpes" does not convince me that the settlor even considered the question of adopted heirs, much less convince me that he intended to exclude them. The majority does not give the 1989 statute its intended effect and, in fact, renders it a nullity by making the “clear and convincing evidence” test and the “plain and ordinary language” test indistinguishable. Contrary to the majority’s inferences, I do not believe that the settlor would have to have said “I intend to exclude adopteds” in order to do so, although that might have been the best course. The term “blood descendants” would have met the test of the 1989 statute. The 1989 statute changed the rules of the game in significant fashion. The majority refuses to give the statute its full effect, and for this reason, I dissent.