- Court: Oregon Court of Appeals
- Area(s) of Law: Trusts and Estates
- Date Filed: 12-04-2024
- Case #: A181975
- Judge(s)/Court Below: Landau, S.J.; Aoyagi, P.J.; & Joyce, J.
- Full Text Opinion
Petitioner moved to establish themselves as the heir to their birth parent’s estate, despite having been adopted nearly forty years prior to the birth parent’s death. Petitioner appealed on the basis that a statutory exception applied to their situation.
“[Adoption terminates] the relationship between the birth parent and the child, as if it had never happened.” See ORS 109.041(1). As applied to intestate succession, “the relationships existing at the time of the death of the decedent govern the passing of the decedent’s estate.” ORS 112.077(2).
ORS 112.077(2) provides two exceptions to that general rule, and only the second exception was at issue in this case. That exception has three conditions:
“(1) a birth parent died; (2) that parent’s spouse remarried; and (3) the stepparent adopted the children.”
Should those conditions be met, the ordinary rule is negated, and the birth parent-child relationship persists despite the adoption.
As interpreted by the Court of Appeals however, that exception only applies if the three conditions occur in sequence. In this case, the second and third conditions occurred almost forty years before the first. Thus:
“We conclude that the trial court did not err in entering a limited judgment dismissing petitioner’s claim.”