gross.com/ew
Houston DUI multimillionaire's real kids fight the adoption of his girlfriend
Photo by © Bob Shanley/Zuma Press
Parents! They're always doing annoying things, like telling lame jokes, dancing in public and adopting their adult girlfriends.
Well, the third thing might only apply to Houston's Harriet Goodman and John Goodman Jr., whose father John Goodman became internationally notorious this month when it was revealed he had adopted his 42-year-old girlfriend in October 2011.
Goodman is currently facing criminal charges and a civil suit based on an accident in 2010 in which he allegedly ran a stop sign and hit a car driven by 23-year-old Scott Wilson, who died after Goodman's car smashed his into the water. Goodman's blood alcohol level was twice the legal limit at the time of the crash.
"If Mr. Goodman is bound to Ms. Hutchins, and feels as though he would like to protect her and take care of her financially, the obvious solution would be to marry her — not to make her his child."
Goodman's adoption of girlfriend Heather Hutchins entitles her to one-third of the trust fund established by Goodman for his heirs, reported to be valued at more than $300 million. Now his biological children are challenging that adoption in court.
According to the Palm Beach Post, neither the teenage children, their mother, or their legal guardian knew about the adoption until two months after it was finalized.
"If Mr. Goodman is bound to Ms. Hutchins, and feels as though he would like to protect her and take care of her financially, the obvious solution would be to marry her — not to make her his child," their attorney Joseph Rebak wrote in a legal filing challenging the adoption in Miami-Dade court.
Lawyers for John Goodman have countered that the adoption was meant to ensure that Hutchins could have standing to oversee that the trust was managed properly.
One Florida attorney has questioned whether the Goodman children have standing to contest the adoption, though their petition cites other cases outside of Florida in which adoptions have been thrown out for being against the public good.
But for the Goodmans, a court invalidating the adoption might be in everyone's interest. Though Palm Beach judge Glenn Kelley had initially ruled that the children's trust could not be considered in assessing the civil charges against John Goodman, the court reversed the opinion after news of the adoption became public, allowing any money controlled by Heather Hutchins to be fair game for civil suit asset consideration.
"The court cannot ignore the reality of the practical impact of what Mr. Goodman has now done. [He] has effectively diverted a significant portion of the assets of the children's trust to a person with whom he is intimately involved at a time when his personal assets are largely at risk in this case," wrote Kelley.
Invalidating the adoption could cause that decision to be altered again, preserving the entirety of the trust for Goodwin's two biological children.
