Massachusetts Law Retroactively Giving Inheritance Rights To Adopted Children Ruled Unconstitutional As Applied
August 30, 2012
Authored by: Luke Lantta
Originally published at bryancavefiduciarylitigation.com
We’ve recently looked at the inheritance rights of children adopted out of families here and here, now let’s look at the inheritance rights of children adopted into families.
Big news out of Massachusetts this week, as the Supreme Judicial Court ruled in Bird Anderson v. BNY Mellon, N.A. that a Massachusetts law that had significant implications for trusts and estates planners, fiduciaries, and especially adopted children was unconstitutional as applied to the trust case before it.
Let’s take a look at the law.
The rights of adopted children as “heirs” under Massachusetts law have a long history.
Prior to 1958, Massachusetts had a statute prescribing a rule of construction for certain types of instruments relating to inheritance that provided that unless the contrary “plainly appear[ed] by the terms of the instrument,” an adopted child was excluded from the definition