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Terrold Bean couldn’t remember any parents other than Arthur and Kathleen Ford, a San Francisco couple who gave him a loving home from the time he was 21 months old. So Terrold never dreamed he’d have to prove he was part of the Ford family to anyone, let alone a judge. But he did.

The Fords had several other foster children when they took Terrold into their home in September 1955. No one knew who the little boy’s father was. His mother had abandoned him at a bus stop, Terrold was later told, and had lost all custody rights by the time he was four, according to court documents. That meant the Fords – or anyone else – were free to adopt him.

Over the next 18 years, many of Terrold’s foster sisters and brothers were either adopted or reunited with their parents, but he wasn’t. The Fords were worried that if they tried to adopt Terrold, he would have to be temporarily put in “a foster home that wasn’t safe,” Kathleen told a friend.

The Fords’ biological daughter, Mary Catherine, once told Terrold that her parents wanted to adopt him but that they’d run into problems with his natural mother and were deterred by the paperwork involved. No other prospective parents ever interviewed the boy.

Terrold said the Fords treated him like their own child. They called him son around other people, changed his religion from Protestant to Catholic and encouraged Mary Catherine to treat him like a brother. Terrold called Mary Catherine his sister. He also called the Fords Mom and Dad. He went with the family on vacations. A childhood friend of Mary Catherine’s said the Fords treated Terrold “more like Mary rather than a foster son, like a real son.”

In 1973, when Terrold was 19, Kathleen died. Terrold continued to live with is foster father, began working a butcher and helped pay household expenses. He moved out after two years and eventually got married. Arthur loaned Terrold 5,000 dollars to start his new life. Terrold began to pay back the money, but when he got divorced, Arthur forgave the 2,000 dollars balance.

Terrold kept in close touch with his foster father and sister over the next two decades. When Arthur was disabled by a stroke in 1999, Terrold helped Mary Catherine with the decision to move him into an eldercare facility, where Terrold visited him regularly. Later that year, Mary Catherine died of cancer. She had named Terrold alternate beneficiary, after her father, on her life insurance policy.

Around the time of Mary Catherine’s funeral, Arthur went on life support. He’d given Terrold temporary power of attorney. With help from a longtime family friend of the Fords’, according to court documents, Terrold arranged Arthur’s care and Mary Catherine’s funeral. Months later, in May 2000, Arthur died. He left no will.

Terrold asked the court to let him inherit Arthur Ford’s estate, arguing that he had been “equitably adopted” by the Fords. Although Arthur and Kathleen had not legally adopted him, they treated him as if they had, and the comments about their desire to adopt gave him the right to be considered their son. It would be unfair, Terrold maintained, to deprive him of his claim to the family estate just because the Fords hadn’t formalized their relationship with him.

But Arthur had a niece and nephew who disagreed. John J. Ford III and his sister, Veronica Newbeck, both children of Ford’s dead brother, hadn’t had any contact with Arthur in 15 years, nor did they attend his funeral. Yet they claimed they were entitled to his estate because Terrold couldn’t meet the legal or equitable standard of proof that he was adopted by the Fords. With Terrold eliminated as a possible heir, they were the only relatives left who could inherit from Arthur Ford.