Irish inheritance - can a adopted half sister make a claim on a biological family member estate?

[MrsBarbara]

Hello,

A friend of mine has been faced with the following situation who lives in the UK and I would be very gratefully for any help or guidance.

Their cousin in Ireland, who was in his 80s, sadly passed away within the last 6 months and they did not leave a will. This person did not have their own family and the only surviving relatives were his first cousins.

They had contacted a local Irish solicitor to deal with the deceased’s estate. Things started to progress when out of the blue it emerged that there was a half sister who wanted to make a claim on the estate. None of the cousins were aware of her existence and it was a complete shock to everyone involved. It turns out that this half sister was adopted at a young age, possibly at child birth, hence why none in the family were aware of her. Even the deceased never mentioned her, so assuming that he too was unaware that he had a half sister.

My question is, would this half sister be able to claim anything from the estate? Am I correct in saying that if a child is adopted that they then loose their rights to their biological parents / family estates as this is transferred to their adoptive family?

Any help or assistance would be greatly appreciated.

Are there any adoption papers?

If she can prove that she was adopted I would imagine she is entitled to put a claim in

But if she is a half sister, do they not share a biological parent?

Do you mean that the half-sister was adopted by another family? So no longer legally part of the cousin's family?

It's not entirely clear from your OP - the half-sister was not adopted by the cousin's family, but adopted out of her birth family. Is that it?

If adopted out of the family, then surely they are no longer legally part of that family and have no rights.

It entirely depends on if she was adopted into or out of the family.

I'm adopted, and as far as I've ever been led to believe, my adoption certificate severed any rights or responsibilities from my biological mother. Legally she is not my mother, therefore I would have no claim on her estate to be honest it wouldn't have occured to me

Hello and thank you all for your quick responses - I am very grateful already!

So to clarify, my friend believes that this half sister was adopted out of the biological family at a very early age. But is there a way to prove this? Will the birth certificate show if a person was indeed adopted or not? Is an adoption certificate, what has already been mentioned, available in the public domain - if so how can a copy be obtained?

Sorry for answering questions with more questions but I am completely new to this and I your value each and everyone one of your responses.

Thank you

I don't know about Ireland, but I know I got my adoption certificate from the local (to where I was adopted) registry office.

Friends have just adopted. The child was given a new birth certificate on it, with the adopted parents names as the parents, with ‘adopted’ in brackets.

Can you get hold of a copy of the birth certificate, or look on Ancestry.co etc to check her status.

I applied to the GRO for mine, got the details from ancestry first so I had the vol number etc. it's a bit cheaper if you have these, or it was.
I paid £7 for mine, but have heard it's just gone up.
I'm adopted and my certificate has my birth details and I was named.
I also have a post adoption birth certificate.
They will send copies, no problem.

I must say though I've never considered myself part of my birth family.
My family were the ones I was adopted into, they were fab, a real family.
Pre 1975 you'd be given no information at all, and the bm lost all rights except the right to not have her details passed to the child.
That's long gone now and people can trace willy nilly.
I feel a bit sorry for all those wanting to keep it quiet wondering when they'll get a knock on their door.

In the UK, children only inherit automatically from their adoptive family, not their original family. A work colleague was put in touch with her child who was adopted and changes her will to specifically include them. Interested to see what happens in ireland. Where did she suddenly appear from?

If she was adopted she has legally left her birth family and become part of her adoptive family so is not able to claim any estate. That's the law in England anyway.

When a child is adopted OUT of a family they no longer have any legal rights to inheritance within the family, unless the family has decided to include them. So, lets say a sibling died, they would have no rights. But if the sibling got to know their sib who was adopted and decided to name them in the will, then they can inherit. In a nutshell they have no rights unless named IN the will specifically.

In this instance unless the uncle named his sister who was adopted (even something like I found out I have a sister who was adopted and want to leave her a 50% share) then she can't claim.