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Adult adoption case heads back to Maine high court

ELBERT AULL

— By

Staff Writer

The three-year legal fight over an adult adoption involving lesbian partners and the fortune of the man who turned IBM into the world's largest computer company is headed back to Maine's highest court.

A judge recently annulled the 1991 adoption of Patricia Spado by her then-lover Olive Watson, the daughter of former IBM President Thomas Watson Jr.

The decision triggered an appeal to the Maine Supreme Judicial Court last week, as lawyers try to prove that the two lovers met the state's legal standard for adoption and that Spado has a claim to the Watson family trusts as an adopted grandchild.

It is the latest in a case that has been fought in two states and has come before Maine's highest court previously.

The case hinges on whether the couple's annual visits to a summer home on North Haven -- the women were New York residents -- met the state's requirements for adoption.

State law at the time required an adoptee to ''live,'' and a parent to ''reside,'' in Maine. Neither term was clearly defined.

The same Knox County probate judge who granted the adoption annulled it in late April, saying the couple's summer stays did not meet the residency standard.

The ruling was sealed, but details of the decision became public in a brief filed last week with the high court.

Attorneys for Spado appealed the decision, saying the couple spent weeks at a time at the Watson family compound -- enough time for Spado to honestly say she lived there when she appeared before a judge and was adopted.

''This was not a situation involving a few days' rental of a Maine home,'' Spado's attorneys, Catherine Connors and Clifford Ruprecht, said in the brief.

They also said that Carol Emery, the judge who approved the adoption about 17 years ago and annulled it a little over two months ago, should have recused herself.

Also appealing the case are trustees of the family trusts, whose attorney expects to file his brief at the end of this month.

Stephen Hanscom, a lawyer in Rockland, plans to argue that the adoption also should have been annulled on other grounds: that it was obtained by two partners who sought to manufacture inheritance rights, and that they did not intend to establish a normal parent-child relationship.

Adult adoption is legal but rare in Maine, often used to formalize a bond between an adult and the stepparent who raised him or her.

Gay rights advocates said the court case is a reminder of the lengths to which same-sex couples would go to ensure a partner's financial security in the days before they were allowed to form civil unions or marry.

Olive Watson and Spado were both in their 40s when the adoption occurred and were residents of New York, a state that prohibited the adoption of a homosexual partner.

The two met in 1978 and had a 14-year relationship, according to court records. The couple lived, bought a dog and attended family events together.

They summered on North Haven, which is where Spado said she lived at the time of her adoption. The women broke up in 1992 but did not have the adoption invalidated.

Thomas Watson died in 1993 without knowledge of the adoption. After his wife died in 2004 and his grandchildren became eligible to collect his trusts, a lawyer notified the trusts that Spado was entitled to a share as an adopted granddaughter.

The claim sparked lawsuits in two states.

Attorneys for the Watson trust in Connecticut argued successfully that Thomas Watson, who lived in Greenwich, Conn., at the time of his death, never recognized Spado as a grandchild and did not intend to have her collect from his trusts. They also tried to have the adoption annulled in Maine.

Spado appealed the Connecticut ruling, but courts there are awaiting a decision in Maine because the case becomes moot if the adoption is annulled.

Spado's attorneys argued that the annulment set a precedent that ''any person with a financial incentive to dispossess an adoptee-heir must be allowed at any time to challenge that heir's very adoptive status'' by questioning where they lived when adoptions were approved.

They did not return calls seeking comment Monday.

Hanscom said the case is far too limited in scope to have such far-reaching consequences.

''This is very, very factually limited,'' he said.

The Spado case is expected to go before the supreme court in the fall.

Early last year, justices overturned a lower court's decision to annul the adoption on a technicality.

-- The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Staff Writer Elbert Aull can be contacted at 791-6325 or at:

eaull@pressherald.com