Michael Tringham provides a round-up of recent adoption & intestacy cases
Child adoption has had legal status in England and Wales since 1926. But only now—in the wake of a 2010 intestacy, a £3.2m trust settlement from 1948 and the European Convention on Human Rights—are adoptees recognised as “statutory next of kin”.
Sons win
The trust’s sole beneficiary, the settlor’s daughter, died in 2010, leaving no children or other descendants. But her late sister, the next entitled, did leave two sons, Christopher and Stephen Pigott, whom she had adopted 60 years ago.
The first question to be decided in Re Erskine Trust, Gregg and anor v Pigott and ors [2012] EWHC 732 (Ch) was the meaning of “statutory next of kin”—“the persons who would take beneficially on an intestacy” under s 50(1) of the Administration of Estates Act 1925 (AEA 1925). The second was whether the Convention, which became part of English law in 2000, had retrospective effect on AEA 1925 and on the construction of a private settlement made in 1948.
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