Recent news reports describe a new twist in adoption practice. According to the reports John Goodman, a wealthy Florida man, has adopted his 42 year old girlfriend, apparently in an attempt to protect some of his assets against possible losses in a wrongful death action filed against him. Goodman is alleged to have been drunk at the time he ran a stop sign, resulting in an accident that killed another man. Prior to the adoption of his girlfriend, Goodman had set up a trust for his two minor children, which the girlfriend may now share in as an adopted child, and news reports say that, under Florida law, the parents of the deceased man could not claim wrongful death damages from that trust.

When most people hear the word “adoption,” they picture what I often call the “Little Orphan Annie” model. You will recall in the Broadway play “Annie,” and before that in the “Little Orphan Annie” comic strip, Annie was only an infant when she was abandoned on the orphanage steps by her poor parents. After many adventures, Annie was adopted by Daddy Warbucks, a kind man with the emotional and economic resources to provide Annie with a real, forever home. Similarly, many people think of adoption mainly as a procedure for bringing babies and young children into forever families who will love and protect them. Although adoption takes that form for many people, in fact adoptions of older children and of stepchildren (adopted by second spouses to one of the children’s birth parents) are becoming more and more common.