Thursday, April 19, 2007
ROCKLAND - A complex legal dispute over the fortune left by IBM executive Thomas J. Watson Jr., may come down to the legal definition of the verb "lives."
The dispute centers on the legality of the 1991 adoption of Patricia Spado by her then-lover, Olive Watson.
At a Knox County Probate Court hearing in 1991, Spado, then 44, testified that she lived on North Haven Island. The hearing resulted in her adoption by Watson, who was 43.
On Wednesday, the same judge who approved the adoption listened to arguments over whether it was legal, potentially making Spado entitled to a share of trust funds left by Olive Watson's father to his grandchildren.
Thomas Watson Jr., once called the "greatest capitalist who ever lived," by Fortune Magazine, ran IBM as it became the world's largest computer company. Court records do not reveal how much he left to his family when he died in 1993, but even a small share of his wealth is believed to be substantial.
Lawyers for a trust set up to benefit the grandchildren have asked Judge Carol Emery to annul the adoption. They argue both women were only summer visitors to Maine, and Spado's claim that she lived on North Haven was an attempt to get the adoption by fraud.
Spado's lawyer said state law at the time did not require an adoptee to be a Maine resident, but only that she "lives" in the state. Emery said she will issue a ruling in writing in the next few weeks, and acknowledged that her decision on the definition would control whether the adoption will stand.
"We all know what the nub of this is," she told the lawyers. "It's lives/resides and whether that constitutes fraud."
Neither Spado nor Watson attended the hearing Wednesday in Rockland. The women have not commented publicly about the case, but according to court records they fell in love in 1978, and had a 14-year committed relationship.
They had joint bank accounts, owned property together and exchanged durable powers of attorney. In order to ensure that Spado would have inheritance rights to Watson's family fortune, the women went to court to create a legal relationship.
Adult adoption was a rare but not unheard of step that same-sex couples used to acquire legal protections denied them by marriage laws.
Watson adopted Spado in 1991. A year later they split up. Watson paid Spado about $500,000, and wrote her a letter that promised "that I have not and that I shall not at any time initiate any action to revoke or annul my adoption of you."
The legality of the adoption became an issue in 2005 when Spado claimed her share of the family trusts following the death of Watson's mother.
In 1991, Maine law required that either the adoptive parent "resides" in Maine or that the child "lives" in the state. In their adoption papers, Watson gave the couple's New York City address, but Spado said she lived at Watson's summer house on North Haven.
An attorney representing the Watson trusts said that the two words mean the same thing, so Spado was lying. But Spado's attorney, Clifford Ruprecht of Pierce Atwood in Portland, said the Legislature would not have used both terms unless they intended a different meaning.
"What more in the petitioner's view does she need to be doing in North Haven beyond living there?" Ruprecht asked.
Representing the Watson trustees, attorney Stephen Hanscom of Rockland said granting the adoption was bad public policy. State law anticipates that adoption creates a parent/child relationship, he said. An adoption between sex partners contradicts the intention of the law.
"This was a fraud on this court," he said.
Wednesdays' hearing is one front in the battle between Spado and the Watson estate.
A Connecticut probate judge's ruling that said she was not legally a grandchild for the purpose of the trusts is currently on appeal in that state's Superior Court.
Staff Writer Gregory D. Kesich can be contacted at 791-6336 or at:
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I bet old Tom Watson is spinning.report abuse
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