The essentials of Adoption Law

When might an individual want to consider adoption?

Adoption can be a useful legal process to make an individual the legal parent of a child who is part of their family, in circumstances where that individual is not recognised as the legal parent, for example:

• The individual is a step-parent.
• The child was born through surrogacy and the individual is not eligible to apply for a parental order to acquire legal parenthood because statutory criteria are not met: for example the individual does not have a biological connection to the child.
• The child was conceived through donor conception but the individual is not a legal parent because statutory criteria are not met: for example, the individual and their partner were not married and conceived through a private arrangement at home or at a clinic outside the UK.

The legal process to obtain an adoption order is detailed and involves making an application to the Family Court; a specialist lawyer can assist.

What legal effect does an adoption order have?

Securing an adoption order means an individual is the child’s legal parent with all the rights and responsibilities which that confers, including for example:

• Parental Responsibility, being the right to make and be involved in important decisions about the child’s life.
• Financial responsibility, including paying child maintenance should those circumstances arise.

When an individual secures an adoption order it also extinguishes the legal parenthood of the child’s other legal parent. For example, if an individual adopts a child conceived by them and their partner through donor conception, and if the donor is the legal parent, the making of an adoption order in favour of the individual extinguishes the status of the donor as a legal parent.

Overseas adoptions

The law governing how overseas adoptions are recognised in the UK is complex. Broadly speaking there is a list of countries from which adoption orders are automatically recognised under the law in the UK. If the overseas adoption is recognised, the individual is the child’s legal parent in the UK and can make an application for an English adoption certificate to confirm this. If the overseas adoption is not recognised, the individual will not be the child’s legal parent in the UK. If this is the case the individual may have recourse to the Family Court in the UK, and a specialist lawyer can advise on options depending on the individual’s circumstances.

There are also important legal considerations with regard to the child having British citizenship, and even if the adoption is recognised in the UK, the child will not necessarily be a British citizen. Specialist legal advice should be sought.

Parental Responsibility in the context of adoption

Parental Responsibility can be a useful way of securing some status for parents who are not legal parents, for example:

• Parents and step-parents who are in the process of applying to adopt but would like some interim status with regard to the child.
• Individuals in multi-parent families where they cannot adopt without extinguishing the status of the child’s other parent. Multi-parent families may be created by a polyamorous relationship, a co-parenting arrangement, or by a step/blended family.
• Parents via donor conception or surrogacy who are not legal parents and do not meet the criteria to adopt, or who do not wish to adopt.

In the UK a child can only have two legal parents, but there is no limit on the number of individuals who can share parental responsibility for a child.

There are different ways of obtaining parental responsibility depending on an individual’s situation, and a specialist lawyer can advise and assist with the process.

This article refers to the law on surrogacy and donor conception and Lucina has written separate articles on these topics, which provide more detailed information.

About Lucina Troy: A specialist Modern Families and Children Lawyer. In the Modern Families space Lucina advises individuals who want to create a family via an alternative path to parenthood, helping them secure, protect, and define the intended legal parent-child relationships. In the Children Law space Lucina undertakes a wide variety of work, including child arrangements and matters of parental responsibility, paternity testing, child maintenance and financial provision, child relocation, child abduction, injunctions and protective orders, disclosure orders, recognition and enforcement of foreign orders, breaches of orders and enforcement, and appeals. Lucina also speaks and provides workshops and seminars to Schools and Businesses, raising awareness and understanding about Modern Families and Children Law matters in schools and in the workplace.