Basic Trope: An adult is legally adopted as another's son/daughter.
- Straight: Alice and Bob, a middle-aged couple, adopt the 25-year-old Chris as their son and heir.
- Exaggerated: Alice and Bob, who are 90+ years old and are practically in their deathbeds, adopt 65-year-old Chris.
- Downplayed: Chris just turned 18 when Alice and Bob adopt him. He's legally an adult, but isn't mature enough to live without parental guidance.
- Justified: Alice and Bob are childless, and they need an heir to inherit their business. They are too old to rear a child into adulthood, so they take their most trusted employee to name as heir.
- Inverted: Alice and Bob, a pair of 16-year-olds, gets saddled with the 13-year-old Chris, the son of Alice's recently deceased uncle and aunt.
- Subverted: Alice and Bob consider adopting Chris, but decide not to bother with the paperwork since he already lives with them anyway.
- Double Subverted: Until they learn that the state forbids a non-relative from inheriting, and they eventually concede to go through the legal process after all.
- Parodied: Chris adopts Alice and Bob as his children.
- Zig Zagged: Alice and Bob bond with Chris and wants to adopt him, but Chris declines, stating that he still wants to find his real parents. When he finds them, Chris's biological parents don't want to have anything to do with him, so he agrees to Alice and Bob's adoption, only to have the registration papers rejected by the adoption agency. However, Chris later legally changes his surname to match his parental substitutes, after Alice and Bob's deaths, the couple name Chris as their heir above their other living relatives, making him functionally Alice and Bob's son even if the relationship is not formally recognized by the state.
- Averted: Alice and Bob don't adopt Chris.
- Enforced: ???
- Lampshaded: ???
- Invoked: After Alice and Bob gives the Like a Son to Me speech to Chris, he suggests that they adopt him to make their parent-child relationship official.
- Exploited: ???
- Defied: The Adoption Agency rejects the application on the grounds that Chris is already an adult.
- Discussed:Dan: So I heard Alice and Bob just adopted Chris as their son.
Emily: But isn't Chris, like, 25? Wow, they must be desperate for an heir. - Conversed: ???
- Deconstructed: Due to his very different background and upbringing, Chris has a very different worldview, lifestyle and habits from his newly adopted parents and this puts them in frequent conflict. And as an adult, he is unable and/or unwilling to make the necessary adjustments to fit in his new living arrangements.
- Reconstructed: After being formally adopted into Alice and Bob's family, Chris realizes that they have a very different lifestyle to what he's accustomed, but he loves them enough to make the necessary changes to live with them, and Alice and Bob do their best to accommodate Chris's differing needs.
- Implied: Chris works for Alice and Bob's household and live with them. Alice and Bob cares very much about him, and occasionally mentions that he's like the son they never had... but it's never explicitly stated that they have adopted him or that they intend to name him as their heir.
- Played For Drama: The adoption causes conflict between Alice and Bob and the rest of their grown children, who cannot get used to the sudden addition of another sibling, and are all too aware of the implications that Chris's presence would have to their inheritance.
- Played For Laughs: Alice and Bob, and the narrative, treats the whole ordeal as though Chris is a small child instead of the grown man he really is, to the latter's annoyance.
- Played For Horror: Chris is a Manipulative Bastard who preys on Alice and Bob's desire to have a child. Once the adoption is formalized, he arranges an "accident" to befall on them so that he could quickly receive their inheritance.
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