Contested Adoption Question

[YourOpenGreenDreamer]

Hi all,

Me and my partner are quite advanced in our adoption, we've been approved, matched and transitions have just started, however on doing a bit more research into how the process works after transitions, we've found out that birth parents can contest the adoption when we start the ball rolling with the court process in a last ditch attempt to get their child back, and this has got us a little worried.

We're not 100% sure but we're fairly confident that our SW hasn't told us about this at any point during the process, but it's been a long and complex process and we may have missed it, in which case, fair enough, that's on us...

From what we've read, and what we know about birth parents, it's very, very, unlikely to be successful if they do attempt to contest the adoption court order, and we've done plenty of Google'ing and can't find many stories at all where birth parents have been successful, but we've just wondering, is there any statistics out there that give an actual over view of the rate of success?

As I said, we know it's very unlikely, but it's still a scary though.

Thank you all!

It is vanishingly rare. They would need permission to even apply to revoke the Order, and they would not even get through the first stage of that (permission) application unless they could show a change of circumstances since the Placement Order that warrants it. Even if they could do that (which is virtually impossible) they would then have to satisfy the court that it was in the child's welfare interests to grant permission (again vanishingly unlikely). They are horrible hearings that invariably give birth parents false hope. I am not aware of any statistics, and doubt very much there would be any, given the private nature of the proceedings, but have never seen or heard of a successful application, even at the permission stage.

We’ve adopted twice. On the first occasion, BP didn’t contest and it was all very straight forward. On the second occasion BM very unexpectedly turned up at court to state she contested.

We were beside ourselves and I remember googling statistics like you’re asking for. Our social worker assured us it was almost unheard of and, although BM contesting meant more paper work and a delay in our daughter becoming ‘ours’, in the end it was all fine.

We were told there wouldn’t be enough time for BM to demonstrate she’d ‘changed’ her lifestyle and could keep a child safe so it would not go in her favour.

The extra paperwork was quite shocking for us to read, highlighting more reasons why AC should not be with BM than we’d previously been aware of. Once we read the report we were much more confident that AC would not return to BM.

It was a decade ago but I still remember how stressful we all found it. It was so emotionally draining - look after yourself and remember that statistics massively favour you.

Hey, from one parent of an AC to another...this is tough. Our AC's birth mum contested. We were assured by our SW that there was no way it would go anywhere. We were also told that birth parent's are encouraged to contest so that they can show their birth child they did everything they could to keep them if asked later in life. I personally feel this gives birth parents hope at a time they really don't have any but may not understand that. As others have said the birth parents have to show such changes in behaviours, environments, relationships and prolonged changes for any kind of consideration to be given to the contest. The AC will have also been with adopted parents for some time at this point and the loving and safe relationship and environment they are in, and the harm in removing they from that, will also be considered. It's been 2.5 years since our AC's adoption was contested and we live a happy, lovely life with our child who is the best thing that has happen to us, alongside his brother. Hold on a little longer. You are so close to the end of this tough process and it is so worth it in the end xxx

Thanks all, very reassuring posts here, much appreciated.

I get that the legal process is what it is for a reason, but it does feel like it's giving false hope to the birth parents while causing weeks/months of stress for the adoptive parents and a mountain of extra work for SW's and the courts...