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A woman’s attempt to overturn her adoption of two sisters was rejected by judges, who emphasized the established legal principle that adoption is meant to be “final and permanent.” The two adopted children, now aged 18 and 19, have not been named in the proceedings. The woman clarified that her case was not a rejection of the girls but was initiated in response to their wishes after they reconnected with their birth mother, who also supported the appeal brought before the UK Supreme Court.
Experts in child protection expressed concern that allowing the adoption to be revoked could undermine the entire adoption system, making it more difficult to find adopters in the future. The court emphasized the importance of maintaining the state’s authority in adoption matters. They highlighted the concept of “parens patriae,” or “father of the people,” which grants the state the responsibility to protect children from serious harm when no other mechanisms are sufficient.
The Supreme Court ruling affirmed that adoption orders should remain “permanent and irrevocable,” except in very rare situations where the original adoption decision was fundamentally flawed. The two young women, referred to as X and Y in court documents, had chosen to live with their birth mother once again. However, the court found that overturning the adoption would conflict with comprehensive legal protections enacted by Parliament to safeguard children’s welfare.
The local authority backed the move to revoke the adoption order for one sister but not the other, while the Department for Education argued that adoption orders should only be reversed under exceptional circumstances. The DfE’s submissions warned that revoking adoption based solely on welfare concerns might jeopardize the stability and permanence that adoption is meant to provide. This uncertainty could discourage potential adopters and affect their willingness to maintain contact between adoptive children and birth families.
The adoptive mother explained that the legal case was motivated purely by the children’s desires and well-being, not because she had rejected them. The girls had been adopted in 2012 at ages four and five following a time in foster care. Though contact with their birth mother was later resumed—with the adoptive mother’s support—the sisters moved back to live with their birth mother in 2021, with one eventually deciding to live with her father.
In early 2023, the local authority initiated care proceedings, declaring the girls “beyond parental control” and granting parental rights to their birth parents. Subsequently, the adoptive mother sought to have the adoption order revoked in the High Court. That application was dismissed on the basis that the court lacked the power to revoke adoption orders, but it was permitted for the sisters to change their surnames back to that of their birth mother.
Michael Wells-Greco, a family law expert from Charles Russell Speechlys who was not directly involved in the case, noted the difficulty of legal remedies when adoptions break down. He emphasized the Supreme Court’s clear stance that adoption is intended to be permanent. According to him, the court underscored that an adopted child is legally treated the same as a biological child, so just as birth parenthood cannot be undone, adoption cannot simply be reversed
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