There was an interesting article today in the Family Law Prof Blog. I follow several blogs written by professors on issues related to my practice areas: family law, estate planning, and probate law. I saw this article and wanted to share it with readers of this blog.
The Family Law Blog article is about adoptions in England and referenced an article in the BBS News. The author of the BBS news article talked about how there were over 1,000 children “wrongfully” adopted each year in England. That is a glaring statistic.
To me, even one child who could be adopted wrongly is one child too many.
According to the BBC article, a liberal democrat politician named John Hemming has argued that, due to the adoption problem in England, a parliamentary inquiry and possible bill should take place immediately. Hemming is quoted as essentially saying that there is too much “secrecy without accountability”. If this is true it would certainly be a problem.
Here is my take as an adoption lawyer: any adoption based on inaccurate facts or secrecy is a wrongful adoption.
I have dealt with several adoptions in my time as a lawyer. I have also represented a client who had his parental rights terminated. Believe me, the father was very upset about the loss of his parental rights. Having any secrecy or missing facts in an adoption proceeding is a big deal. If there were facts that would have helped my client, I certainly would have wanted to know about them.
I am not saying that adoptions are wrong. I am saying that adoptions based on secrecy or inaccuracies as reported by social workers, adoption agencies, or other institutions are wrong. Unfortunately, in my experience as an Minnesota adoption lawyer, these agencies are often under-staffed and can miss facts or details. At times it seemed to be a reactionary issue where an agency person would simply receive a report of child abuse and immediately place a child into the state-run, child-protection-program. Once the child was in the program, there are many hurdles that a parent must jump over in order to regain his or her parental rights.
Given the holes in this kind of system – holes which I witnessed first-hand – I can understand when a politicians like Mr. Hemming gets upset. That is his job. Whether the report is true or not, I am glad that somebody is looking out for the interests of biological parents. They have rights too.
