Florida Multimillionaire Denied Sleazy Adoption Request

A Florida judge denied one of the strangest and sleaziest legal requests we’ve ever seen on Wednesday. Polo mogul John Bailey Goodman asked if he could adopt his girlfriend. Like, as his child. Oh, and she’s 42-years-old.

Goodman, a multimillionaire, was denied his oddball request in the 3rd District Court of Appeal this week. The biggest question is, obviously, not whether or not Goodman could adopt his middle-aged girlfriend, but why he would want to in the first place. It wasn’t some weird extreme sex game. It was actually a lot sleazier than that, if you can imagine.

His adoption of his girlfriend was actually seen as an attempt to protect his assets from a lawsuit. Goodman killed 23-year-old Scott Wilson in a drunken car wreck in 2010,and was sentenced to 16 years in jail for DUI manslaughter but appealed. He posted a $7 million bond and is currently under house arrest. But Wilson’s family is suing him.

So, under the adoption contract, Goodman would pay girlfriend Heather Hutchins more than $16 million. Does this look like fraud to you? That’s what the court thought too.

The appellate judges slammed the adoption request as an obvious subterfuge that “constituted a fraud on the court” in a nine-page opinion.

Aside from the Wilson family’s lawsuit, Goodman is also apparently involved in a court battle with his ex-wife over management of their children’s trust fund. The adoption of Hutchins was also seen as an attempt to manage the money in that fund.

“Even if the motivation and the means for securing it were not so reprehensible, I believe … the adoption of a paramour is so contrary to the beneficent purposes of such an action that no such judgment can ever be sustained,” Senior Judge Alan Schwartz wrote.

What do you think of John Bailey Goodman’s attempt to adopt his girlfriend?