Wednesday Weirdness

Welcome to Wednesday Weirdness, a recurring theme where we post something truly weird and wacky in adoption or child welfare.

“A Manhattan model who died six years ago leaving a $25 million estate – but no will to say how her money should be distributed – could wind up leaving taxpayers with a windfall.

After Gigi Carrier Cowell died in 2009, her brother argued that he was entitled to her estate, which included a lavish 14-room duplex on Sutton Place, large money market accounts and several luxury sports cars.

So far, Manhattan Surrogate Judge Rita Mella has not issued a definitive ruling on the long legal battle.

Mella’s predecessor, Kristen Booth Glenn, refused to make the brother, Leonard Carrier, the administrator of his sister’s estate in 2009. He died last year.

Now Carrier’s widow, Claire, is staking a claim for herself and her two grown children.

The family’s problem is that Gigi Carrier was adopted in 1979 by her lover, Shirley Cowell, a songwriter and heiress. Cowell, then 57, adopted Carrier, 41, because gay marriages were not legal and she wanted her longtime partner to inherit the wealth she had received from her father, who was in the oil and gas business.

Carrier, who was known as a talented stock trader, inherited Cowell’s fortune when she died in 1997.

Under New York State law, in cases like this, siblings don’t automatically inherit a brother or sister’s estate when they don’t leave a will because legally, family ties were severed with the adoption.

Claire Carrier, in an affidavit filed in court, says that despite the adoption, Gigi Carrier functioned for all her life as a member of her birth family. She celebrated holidays with her mother and brother’s family, cared for her mother personally and financially until she died, and inherited half of her mother’s estate.

Carrier says her family vacationed with Gigi Carrier and Cowell and received lavish gifts of jewelry and even a Thunderbird.

However, the city’s public administrator, Ethel Griffin, who is assigned to oversee estates where there are no wills, says that’s all irrelevant.

In papers filed last fall in Manhattan Surrogate Court, Griffin said Carrier’s family “has no inheritance rights” because Gigi Carrier was legally severed from her family by the adoption.

“The adopted child has no inheritance rights from or through his or her natural parents, and their next of kin and the natural parents and their next of kin have no inheritance rights from or through the adopted child,” Griffin told the court.

Griffin’s attorney, Peter Schram, argued in 2009 that there were no court decisions on record that would allow the Surrogate to restore Carrier’s rights to adopt his sister’s estate “because of the circumstances of the adoption.”

“The right to inherit under New York law does not depend upon one’s personal relationship with the decedent,” he said.

Linda Kordes, an attorney appointed by Mella to act as a guardian ad litem for the estate, appeared to be sympathetic to the Carrier family’s argument.

“Under normal circumstances, such a claim would merit no consideration at all in my opinion. What makes this interesting -but not dispositive — is that Leonard claimed his right to inherit survived the adoption because the basis of the adoption was to create a nontraditional family … at a time … when same sex couples could not marry,” Kordes said.

Kordes said that after taxes and expenses, there was only $10.2 million left in the estate. She reported that the duplex apartment in River House on Sutton Place sold for $2 million less than its estimated value of $8 million because it needed a lot of work and River House would only allow construction between May and July.

There are no eligible heirs on Cowell’s side of the family, Kordes reported. Thus, she said, the money should be deposited with the city controller’s office until or unless someone eligible to get it claims it.

Claire Carrier’s lawyer, Thomas Bonner, said none of this would have been a problem is Gigi had written a will but a thorough search of her home turned up nothing.

Bonner said there are at least 40 states with similar laws and they need to be reevaluated in light of the Supreme Court’s decision on gay marriage.

“This statute was written decades ago,” he said, when there was “very sound public policy” that terminated a birth family’s rights in the case of an adoption. However, he said, “the times have changed” and neither the law nor court decisions have kept up.

Bonner said the courts have mostly applied the law and rejected a birth family’s inheritance claims when their family member was adopted as a baby, not when they were adopted as an adult to sidestep old prohibitions on gay marriage.

It is unclear when Mella will rule.”

Model’s $25 million estate languishes while relatives battle lover-adoption hurdle in Manhattan court[NY Daily News 8/20/15 by Barbara Ross]