## Facts

- Earl J. Vallandingham died in 1956, survived by his widow, Elizabeth, and their four children.
- In 1958, Elizabeth married Jim Walter Kilgore, who adopted Earl’s four children.
- In 1983, Earl’s brother, William Martin Vallandingham, Jr., died intestate.
- The children claimed they could take, by representation, the share their deceased natural father would have received from William’s estate.
- The estate’s personal representative denied the claim, asserting the adoption cut off inheritance rights from and through the natural father’s family line.

## Issues

1. Whether children adopted by their stepfather after their natural father’s death may inherit intestate, by representation through their natural father, from their natural paternal uncle.
2. Whether Maryland’s adoption and intestacy statutes treat adoption as terminating an adopted child’s right to inherit from or through natural parental collateral relatives, except as expressly preserved.

## Decision

- The Court of Special Appeals of Maryland affirmed the circuit court’s judgment denying the children a share of the intestate estate.
- The court held that, upon adoption, the children were no longer considered children of their natural father for intestacy purposes and therefore could not inherit through him by representation from his collateral relatives.
- The stepparent-adoption exception preserved inheritance only as to the natural parent married to the adopting stepparent (the mother), not as to the deceased natural father or his relatives.

## Legal Principles

- Adoption is governed by statute; intestate inheritance consequences follow the statutory definition of the parent-child relationship.
- Under Maryland Estates & Trusts § 1-207(a), an adopted child is treated as the natural child of the adoptive parent(s) and, upon adoption, is no longer considered the child of either natural parent, subject to a limited stepparent-adoption exception.
- Termination of the natural parent-child relationship for intestacy bars inheritance both “from” the natural parent and “through” the natural parent by representation from the natural parent’s collateral relatives, absent statutory authorization.
- In a stepparent adoption, the statute preserves the child’s status only with respect to the natural parent who remains the spouse of the adoptive stepparent; it does not preserve inheritance rights through the other natural parent’s bloodline.

## Conclusion

Because the children’s stepparent adoption severed their intestacy relationship to their deceased natural father, they could not take by representation from their natural paternal uncle’s intestate estate, and the denial of distribution was affirmed.


Hall v. Vallandingham, 75 Md. App. 187, 540 A.2d 1162 (Md. Ct. Spec. App. 1988)