Review of Reviews: “The Stranger-to-the-Marriage Doctrine: Judicial-Construction Issues Post-Obergefell,” 2019 Wis. L. Rev. 373 (2019)Review of Reviews: “The Stranger-to-the-Marriage Doctrine: Judicial-Construction Issues Post-Obergefell,” 2019 Wis. L. Rev. 373 (2019)

In 1851, Massachusetts enacted the first modern adoption statute; today, most states allow adoptees to inherit under intestacy and include adoptees in class gifts to children or descendants absent an express contrary statement in the governing instrument. Such wasn’t always the case. Early on, even though adding children through adoption was a legal possibility, adoptees were disfavored and generally barred from inheriting from third-party donors under the stranger-to-the-adoption doctrine. An adoption was certainly valid among the parties involved but didn’t, necessarily, change the manner in which the law treated dispositions by third parties.  

Professor Lee-Ford Tritt has written a crisp and thorough survey of the ways in which the do...