Post-Adoption Contact Agreements - Legalities
Part 4: Legalities While the debate over whether or not post-adoption contact agreements should be legally recognized and enforceable - and how - goes on, approximately
18 states have some sort of provision ranging from visitation agreements in adoptions from foster care (not to be confused with court-ordered visitation in foster and step families), to agreements in cases of kinship adoption, to full recognition and enforcement of mediated agreements. (Statutes are pending in several other states.)
According to Joan Hollinger, Visiting Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley, and a leading American scholar on the legal and psychosocial aspects of adoptive family relationships, these statutes share some important elements:
•The validity of adoptions may not be challenged for failure to comply with an agreement for visitation or communication.
•The statutes provide, or courts have construed them to provide, for a separate civil action to enforce or modify the agreements until the child's 18th birthday.
•They do not authorize courts to impose post-adoption contact on anyone over their objection; the adoptive parents and the child, if over the age of 12 or 14, must request or agree to maintain contact with the child's birth parent – or, in some cases, a sibling, grandparent or other relative.
•The "best interests of the child" standard is supposed to govern judicial decisions to approve, modify or enforce post-adoption contact agreements.
The best Net resource for state statutes is:
The
National Adoption Information Clearinghouse: Cooperative Adoptions: Contact Between Adoptive and Birth Families After Finalization; State Statutes Pertaining toAdoption with Contact
Outside State Statutes As openness becomes more accepted and recognized as desirable in many instances, placing and adopting parents may also choose to formulate written agreements between themselves, even in states where these are not legally recognized or enforceable. For many, this may be an important part of their open adoption intentions and a means of building and maintaining trust and commitment among extended family members. Adoption counseling professionals may make themselves available to assist in preparing these agreements, as well as to provide mediation services along the way.
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4 Related Resources •
Adopting Parents Center •
Legal Considerations •
Placing Parent Resources •
Glossary of Terms •
Open Adoption •
State Statutes for Enforceable Contracts© Nancy S Ashe
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