Adoption: leave to appeal.

Harris, Alexandra Conroy

Re PW(Adoption) [2012]

High Court Family Division Parker J

12 October 2011 [2011] EWHC 3793

(Fam)

PW was orphaned as a teenager and went to live with the parents of a friend. They applied to adopt her when she was 17 and a guardian was appointed who reported that PW wanted to belong to the family and to take their name. An adoption order was made and PW continued to live with the family until she was 23, thereafter maintaining positive relationships with her adoptive parents, adoptive sister and her two birth sisters. After the death of her adoptive mother PW wanted to set aside or revoke the adoption. The only way that she would be able to do this would be to appeal, so she applied for permission to appeal the adoption order and an extension of time to appeal of 51 years. PW, now aged 69, believed that she had not been asked about her wishes and feelings and had not felt able to say anything to oppose the desire of the family to adopt her. She believed that it had not been in her interests legally to separate her from her birth sisters.

Held

The order had been made under the Adoption Act 1958 and there was no evidence of failure to comply with the procedures then in place. The delay of over 50 years meant that it would be impossible to rely on PW's recollections and there was no prospect of an appeal succeeding. Permission was refused.

Comment

Permission to appeal 50 years out of time would be extraordinary in any circumstances. In this case the particular nature of adoption and the fact that it had continued, apparently successfully, for so long, makes it even more unusual. There are very few cases where an adoption order has been appealed successfully, requiring either serious procedural irregularity (eg in Re T (A Child) [2012] above) or deception (Re M [1991] 1 FLR 458) amounting to a failure of natural justice.

Alexandra Conroy Harris, BAAF's Legal Consultant, prepared these notes