In Re Estate of Gillin

This is an appeal by petitioners Esther Kearney, Margaret Raleigh and Charlotte Keefe, from an order of the Franklin Superior Court dismissing their appeal from the Franklin Probate Court. The probate court denied petitioners’ claim as adoptive first cousins to the estate of John P. Gillin, who died intestate on May 24,1984. At the time of Gillin’s death, no heirs by blood survived him, and the Vermont statutes in effect at the time prohibited collateral relatives, such as petitioners, from inheriting from a person who had been adopted. See 15 V.S.A. § 448 (1963). The primary property in the…