According to police records, on February 10, 2010, Goodman drove under the influence and fatally collided with Scott Wilson, a young man just 23 years old. Wilson's parents subsequently filed a lawsuit against him, and Goodman is likely to lose a significant portion of his assets as part of the settlement paid to the Wilson family.
Goodman, aged 48, is the founder of the Palm Beach Polo Club in Florida and an inheritor of a multimillion-dollar trust fund. Legal documents reveal that last autumn, he officially adopted his 42-year-old girlfriend, Heather Hawkins (Heather Laruso), as his legal daughter. He did this to preserve his own assets.
An international online exclusive: According to the UK's Daily Mail on February 1, when a man wants to spend the rest of his life with his girlfriend, he usually proposes marriage. However, American polo magnate John Goodman chose an extremely unconventional method—adopting her as his daughter.
The attorney for the Palm Beach adoption case commented on the matter: "I find this both disgusting and fascinating." The local judge also expressed that Goodman's actions had placed the court in a difficult position. (Chen Shuo)
However, during the trial, the judge was shocked to discover that Goodman had already adopted his girlfriend as a beneficiary of his estate. Previously, the judge had ruled that the trust fund established for Goodman's two biological children would not be affected by this case. To protect his assets, Goodman adopted his girlfriend Hawkins as his daughter in October of last year and transferred one-third of his trust fund into her name.