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Adoption

The court order that makes a child legally the son or daughter of someone other than the birth parents - the kinds of adoption, whose consent is required, how the birth parents' rights end, the home study and the hearing, and what the order changes about inheritance, records and the child's name.

Informational only - this is not legal advice. These definitions explain general legal vocabulary in plain English. They are not advice about your situation, reading them creates no attorney-client relationship, and the law differs from state to state and changes over time. For advice you can rely on, speak to a lawyer licensed in your state.

What it means

Adoption is a court proceeding, created entirely by statute, that ends the legal relationship between a child and the birth parents and creates a new one with the adoptive parents that is identical in law to a relationship by birth. Every state has its own adoption code, and the code distinguishes the routes: adoption by a step-parent or relative, adoption of a child in foster care after the state has ended the parents' rights, private placement arranged through a licensed agency or directly with a birth parent, and adoption of a child from abroad, which also runs through federal immigration law and, for most countries, the Hague Adoption Convention. Adult adoption exists in most states and is used mainly to formalise a long-standing parental relationship or for inheritance.

The centre of every adoption is consent, because a parent's rights are constitutional and cannot be transferred by contract. A birth parent's consent must be in the form the statute prescribes, given after the child's birth (many states impose a waiting period after delivery before a consent is valid), and in most states it becomes irrevocable after a short window or once the court accepts it. Where a parent will not consent, the adoption can proceed only if that parent's rights are first terminated on a statutory ground - abandonment, unfitness, failure to support or to establish a relationship - in a separate hearing with its own notice and proof requirements. An unmarried father's consent is required if he has established paternity or taken the steps his state's putative-father registry or case law requires; a father who has done neither may lose the right to object. A child above an age the statute sets must also consent. Where the child is a member of or eligible for membership in a federally recognised tribe, the Indian Child Welfare Act adds placement preferences, a heightened standard of proof and the tribe's right to intervene.

Before the order the court receives a home study or investigation of the adoptive household and, in agency and foster adoptions, the agency's report; in private placements the statute limits what a birth parent may be paid to reasonable medical, legal and living expenses, and payment beyond that is a crime in every state. The final hearing is usually short. The decree changes the child's legal parentage for every purpose - custody, support, inheritance from and through the adoptive family, the birth certificate, which is reissued with the adoptive parents' names - and, in most states, seals the original records, with access later governed by the state's open-records or mutual-consent rules. A finalised adoption can be set aside only on the narrow grounds the statute allows, such as fraud or a consent that was never valid, and only within a period the statute fixes.

Where this comes from

Adoption is state statute: each state's adoption code sets the consent, notice, home-study and hearing requirements. The constitutional protection of a parent's rights, which is why consent or termination is required, comes from Stanley v. Illinois, 405 U.S. 645 (1972), Quilloin v. Walcott, 434 U.S. 246 (1978), Lehr v. Robertson, 463 U.S. 248 (1983) (an unmarried father's rights depend on the relationship he has established), and Santosky v. Kramer, 455 U.S. 745 (1982) (clear and convincing evidence to terminate). The Indian Child Welfare Act is 25 U.S.C. §§ 1901-1963, upheld in Haaland v. Brackeen, 599 U.S. 255 (2023), with the placement preferences at § 1915. Intercountry adoption is the Intercountry Adoption Act of 2000, 42 U.S.C. §§ 14901-14954, implementing the Hague Convention of 1993, and the immigration provisions at 8 U.S.C. § 1101(b)(1)(E)-(G). The Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997, Pub. L. 105-89, shapes foster-care adoptions through 42 U.S.C. § 675(5). Waiting periods, revocation windows and the age at which a child's own consent is required are each state's own and are not stated here.

When people hire a lawyer for this

Step-parent and relative adoptions are often uncontested, but the consent or termination step is where they fail, and an adoption completed over a defective consent is an adoption that can be attacked later. A lawyer is needed whenever a birth parent will not consent or cannot be found, whenever ICWA may apply, in any private placement (the expense rules and the interstate compact for children placed across state lines are both traps), and in intercountry cases, where the immigration steps must be done in the right order. Birth parents considering consent should have independent advice before signing, because the window to change one's mind is short and in most states closes for good.

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Part of the LawyerLand plain-English legal glossary. Definitions are written from primary sources - statutes and court rules - and each entry states the authority it rests on, or says plainly when the doctrine is state law with no national rule.

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