Jell-O fight: Longview woman takes step toward jiggly inheritance
Wednesday, March 28, 2007 11:14 PM PDT
By Amy M. E. Fischer
Printable version
E-mail this articleWhen Longview resident Beth McNabb set out to find her birth mother, she had no idea the woman who gave her up for adoption was heiress to the Jell-O fortune.
McNabb reunited with her mother, Barbara (Woodward) Piel, and her two half-sisters in 1988. Only then did McNabb find out she was the product of an affair Piel had with a married man -- and that McNabb's great-grandfather, entrepreneur Orator Francis Woodward, bought a flavored gelatin business for $450 in 1899 that would one day become a household name.
Piel, a resident of Genesee County, N.Y., married another man after adopting out her daughter. She died in 2003.
Now McNabb, 51, is in a legal battle with Fleet Bank to claim her one-third share of the $10 million trust that was to be divided among Barbara W. Piel's children, the New York Law Journal reports.
Friday, a New York appellate court panel ruled that McNabb is legally considered a "descendant" and "living child" of Piel under the trusts Piel's mother set up in 1926 and 1963. The ruling overturned a lower court's December 2005 decision that said as an "adopted-out" daughter, McNabb didn't qualify for a share of the trust.
Fleet Bank is seeking permission to appeal.
Wednesday, a receptionist at Northwest Psychological Resources in Longview, where McNabb is office manager, said McNabb was referring all media inquiries to her attorney, Paul Boylan.
Boylan, reached by telephone Wednesday in LeRoy, NY, said he and McNabb aren't giving any interviews until the case is resolved.
McNabb told the New York Law Journal the court case wasn't about the money -- it was about establishing her relationship to her family. When she began looking for her birth mother in 1974 at age 19, she half-expected to find a "bag lady" because many women who choose adoption are poor, she said.
McNabb and her husband, Duke, a Norpac operator, are licensed foster parents who have sheltered more than 160 children at their Longview home since 1993. They have two adult children of their own.
To read about the history of Jell-O, go to www.jellomuseum.com.
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