Love Might Not Prevail After All

SAN FRANCISCO —  A couple of months before his second birthday, Terrold Bean moved into his new home here. His foster parents converted him to Roman Catholicism and called him “son.” He stayed until he was 20.

Bean called Catherine and Arthur Ford “Mom” and “Dad,” and referred to their one biological child, Mary Catherine, as his sister. After the deaths of the women, Bean cared for his foster father in his old age.

But the law has yet to recognize these bonds of time and devotion. When Arthur Ford, Bean’s foster father, died without a will, courts decided that his $640,000 estate should go to a niece and nephew who hadn’t seen Ford in more than 15 years. Nor had they attended his funeral.

“I figured I was the son,” said Bean, 49, who seeks to inherit the estate. “After a while, I was their son.”

In a ruling that will determine the inheritance rights of nonbiological children such as Bean, the California Supreme Court is poised to decide whether a child who enters a home, becomes integrated with the family and enjoys a reciprocal relationship with nonbiological parents should be eligible to inherit after their death, as are blood offspring.

A decision in favor of Bean would permit individuals in his situation, including the nonbiological children of gays, to inherit when a parent dies without a will. Most people never make a will, and estates in such cases typically go to the closest biological relatives.

But opponents contend that giving unrelated children greater inheritance rights might unsettle foster parents and others who take kids into their homes and expect that unless they make a will directing otherwise, their estates will go only to their biological children. There are nearly 100,000 foster children in California.

“Anybody who takes in a child from an agency would be crazy,” said Thomas J. Williams, who is representing Ford’s niece and nephew. “They would be sticking their estate on the line.”

Williams contends that Bean has marshaled no evidence that Ford wanted him to inherit his estate. The intentions of the deceased are typically key in such cases.

Most states recognize some degree of inheritance rights of nonbiological children who have not been formally adopted. Eleven states have no such doctrine.

California courts have awarded inheritance rights to individuals such as Bean over the decades, but never in a situation precisely like his. In the cases in which nonbiological children were permitted to inherit, the parents had either tried to legally adopt, presented the child to outsiders as their adopted offspring or had told the child that he or she had been adopted.

There are no records to show that the Fords ever intended to adopt Bean, even though Bean’s biological mother lost all rights to him when he was 3 years old. The Fords did not change his last name and never promised him the wealth they accumulated over their lifetimes.

But Bean said the Fords were his parents.

“There are a lot of situations where people don’t want to adopt,” said Patrick Sullivan, Bean’s lawyer. “They’re intimidated by the social welfare system. And a lot of people are not going to want to submit to intrusive investigations or the expense.”

A trial court and an appeals court have already ruled that Bean may not inherit because there was no clear and convincing evidence that the Fords ever intended to adopt him.

“The fact that the Fords retained Terrold in their home for 16 years without making him available for adoption by someone else is not, in and of itself, a public acknowledgment of an intent to adopt,” the trial judge ruled.

Bean, a butcher who lives in Oakland, grew up in a one-story stucco home in a middle-class neighborhood here with his foster mother, an Irish immigrant; her husband, a Teamster; and his foster sister, Mary Catherine.

The Fords had always wanted more children and took in foster children over the years to compensate, Bean said. About 20 children entered and left the Ford home over the years. Only Bean stayed.

Bean recalled that couples eager to adopt would come to the Ford home to see the children. His mother, he said, never wanted him in the house during those visits. He said she would tell him to go to a schoolyard a few blocks away and play for a couple of hours.

There were times when he wondered if the Fords would ever try to find him adoptive parents.

“It crossed my mind,” he said, seated in his lawyer’s small office in downtown Oakland. “But I never asked questions of my parents. I was very quiet.”

He said he “didn’t want to push any buttons.” And he did not want to hear that they would ever give him up. “If it was a negative answer, I didn’t want to know.”

San Francisco County records on Bean are scarce. The Fords did not list him in their registry of foster children, a booklet in which they named the other foster children who came and went. No one knows why.

An old friend of Bean’s foster mother has testified that Catherine Ford said she and her husband wanted to adopt Bean, but feared he would have to be separated from them during the proceedings.

Bean said that Mary Catherine, with whom he was close, had also told him that her parents wanted to adopt him, but that they felt intimidated by the bureaucracy.

Asked if the Fords treated him the same way they treated their biological daughter, Bean smiled sheepishly and said they probably favored her. She went to Catholic schools, he went to public schools. Bean said the Fords also were stricter with him.

When Bean was 18, his foster mother died. He stayed in the grief-stricken home two additional years to help out, and contributed financially to the family.

He returned the Fords’ loyalty by helping Mary Catherine care for their father after he suffered a stroke, and arranging a convalescent home for him.

“My sister and I would take turns visiting him there,” Bean said. “One weekend I would go, and the following weekend she would go.”

Mary Catherine died in 1999 of cancer. Her insurance benefits were designated to go to her father. Bean, identified in the policy as her “brother,” was named as an alternate beneficiary.

Telling Arthur Ford that his daughter was dead fell to Bean. “I didn’t know how I was going to tell him,” he said. “He took it really hard.”

Bean served as the administrator of Mary Catherine’s estate, and arranged for a family friend who lived closer to the convalescent home to become Ford’s conservator.

Among the papers the late Ford left behind was a birthday card Bean had sent him. “For a Wonderful Father,” it said. “Love you, Terry XXX000.”

All this history does not impress Ford’s nephew and niece. John J. Ford, the nephew who stands to inherit the estate with his sister, insisted that Bean’s only distinction from the other foster children -- none of whom has claimed any part of the Ford estate -- was that he stayed on.

“He wasn’t close to them,” Ford said. “He had a good deal. They treated him as yet another one of the foster children. All this stuff about how they would hide him [from prospective adoptive parents], that stuff came from Bean.”

The money that Bean gave to his foster parents -- he called it “contributions” -- was nothing more than rent, according to the lawyer for the nephew and niece.

Ford, 74, said his paternal uncle and wife and daughter would attend family parties when relatives were visiting from Ireland. “We never saw Bean,” he said.

“Family was important” to his uncle, he said. “The law says family is important, and my uncle never evidenced any intent while he was competent that Bean should inherit.”

Ford and his sister did not attend their cousin’s funeral because they were never notified of Mary Catherine’s death, John Ford said. He said he did not attend his uncle’s funeral because he was living outside the Bay Area at the time.

“Arthur Patrick Ford never mentioned adoption, never let him use the family name, never told anybody that he was going to adopt him or give him anything in his estate,” said Williams, the Fords’ lawyer.

If the state high court overturns the lower courts, “it will be 1,000% emotion and ignoring the law,” he said.

The case appears to have divided the California Supreme Court, which must issue a ruling by early next month. During a hearing in November, some justices seemed to want to rule for Bean but were uncertain whether the law permitted it.

“You have a very sympathetic client,” Justice Joyce Kennard told Bean’s lawyer. “What about the law?”

Justice Kathryn Mickle Werdegar pointed out that Bean treated his foster father “exceptionally nicely” when the elder man became frail. Bean was “lovingly related” to the Fords, but Ford’s niece and nephew, who stand to inherit the estate, “had no relationship,” she said.

“Where is the equity there?” she asked.

But Justice Marvin Baxter raised concerns about the possibility of foster children challenging the wills of foster parents. He said parents often treat their daughters-in-law and sons-in-law as family, but that doesn’t mean they want them to inherent their wealth.

“If this concept is taken too far, I am afraid it could be inconsistent with the presumed intent of the decedent,” Baxter said.

At the close of the hearing, Sullivan tried to persuade the court that the late Ford would not have left his estate to his niece and nephew.

“Does anyone seriously think the deceased in these circumstances would want to see his property left to someone who repaid his generosity by deserting him in old age?” Sullivan asked.

Bean said he regularly visited Ford in the nursing home until his death. But he never broached the subject of a will. It was just too uncomfortable, he said.

He expressed surprise when asked if he felt angry at the Fords for failing to have provided for him in a will.

“They gave me a lot of love. Why should I be angry at them?” he said. “It wasn’t their fault. It was just the way they were. I was just grateful that I was raised the way I was.”