Law of Wills, 2016A

Uniform Adoption Act § 4-103 (1994)
(b)
An adoption by a stepparent does not affect:
(3) the right of the adoptee or a descendant of the adoptee to inheritance or intestate
succession through or from the adoptee’s former parent.
It is usually in the child’s best interests to be in a two parent family. Thus, legislatures and
the courts seek to preserve the family unit. If the parents, divorce, legislatures and courts ensure that
the noncustodial parent maintains contact with the child by giving that person liberal visitation
rights. Therefore, divorce does not sever the parent-child relationship. On the other hand, if the
custodial parent remarries, it is in the child’s best interests to blend into that family unit. Normally,
the birth parent-child relationship takes precedent over the stepparent-stepchild relationship.
Consequently, as will be discussed in a later chapter, stepchildren are not typically considered to be
the heirs of their stepparents. To encourage harmony in blended families, legislatures and courts do
not permit the relationship that the child has with his or her stepparent to interfere with the
relationship that the child has with his or her birth parents. In jurisdictions that have adopted the
UPC, the stepparent’s adoption of the child does not impact the relationship between the child and
the birth parents. This approach permits the courts to respect the relationships that children have
with their stepparents and their birth parents. In light of the high divorce rate and the increasing
number of blended families, the UPC’s approach is consistent with public policy.
Impact on the right to inherit from biological parent(s)
Estate of Jacobs, 719 A.2d 523 (Me. 1998)
SAUFLEY, J.
Gloria B. Norcott appeals from an order of the Oxford County Probate Court (Hanley, J.), finding
that Jameson Boucher is the “child” of her son Derek Jacobs, now deceased for purposes of
intestacy under the Maine Probate Code. Because we agree with the Probate Code that Boucher’s
adoption by his mother’s husband did not change his relationship with Jacobs, his natural father, for
purposes of intestacy pursuant to 18-A M.R.S.A. § 2-109, we affirm.
Jameson Boucher (named Jameson LaCroix at birth) was born in 1970 in New Hampshire to
Suzanne LaCroix. LaCroix, unmarried at that time, later married Peter Boucher, who adopted
Jameson just before his second birthday. The child’s last name was accordingly changed from
LaCroix to Boucher under the adoption decree. The decree was silent as to the child’s relationship
to his natural father. Indeed, it is not clear from the record that the identity of Jasmeson Boucher’s
father was known at the time of adoption. It is undisputed, however, that when Boucher became an
adult he established a relationship with Derek Jacobs before Jacob’s death and that Jacobs is, in fact,
Boucher’s natural father.
Derek Jacobs died intestate in Maine in early December 1995, at the age of forty-three. Norcott, his
mother, filed a petition for her informal appointment as personal representative of Jacobs’s estate,
and listed herself and Robert Jacobs, Derek’s father, as the decedent’s only heirs. Jameson Boucher
filed a competing petition for formal adjudication of intestacy, identifying himself as Jacobs’s son,
188