Can an adult be adopted in Ireland

sage4me

Hi,

I know this might be an odd question but I am neither legally fostered or adopted as my mother did not sign the final documents. I did not find this out until my 18th birthday as mam and dad didn't want to upset me, but because my biological mother didn't sign all the documents I could be adopted as I child and had a social worker my entire life.

When we went to find out about adoption as an adult we were told it wasn't possible. Now, this is where the fun starts, in the eyes of the law my family are not my family and god forbid if myself and my husband are killed tomorrow my family are not entitled to my children, and when my dad made his will I will have to pay tax after the 1st x amount as I am not a relative and there have been rumblings within the family that I a sibling would contest the will as I am not related and dad wants this nipped in the bud.

I want to see about changing the law in relation to this and have been told it will be very expensive - and I just wanted wanted to know if anyone else is in this position.

Thanks in advance.

The_Conductor

Section 23 of the 2010 Adoption Act prescribes the conditions under which a child can be adopted in Ireland- namely:

(1) The Authority shall not make an adoption order unless the child

• resides in the State,
• at the date of the application, is not more than 7 years of age, is an orphan or is born of parents not married to each other, and
• has been in the care of the applicants for the prescribed period (if any).

You can petition the Adoption Authority- outside of these criteria- however these would exceptional circumstances, and are not legislated for.

sage4me

Thanks for the response, being honest I am a little bit overwhelmed as to where to start. I know it will be an uphill battle every step of the way, but am unsure as to whether I should start. I don't know if I should talk to the Adoption Agency or get legal advise. It is a difficult situation and I just don't know where to begin.

Surely I cannot be the only person in this situation ?

The_Conductor

To be honest with you- and I have heard many strange stories- I'm not aware of anyone who successfully pursued having themselves legally adopted, as an adult. You need professional advice from someone thoroughly familiar with the legislation- Geoffrey Shannon comes to mind immediately- perhaps you might be able to appeal to his better nature and get him to informally offer you some advice?

Aside from anything else- and as alluded to by yourself, if/when you were to inherit from your parents (and its not something that most of us like to think of), the tax implications would be horrendous. Perhaps a case might be made with the Revenue Commissioners- vis-a-vis the tax aspect of things- but then, as suggested by your Dad- there could always be the case that someone might challenge any inheritance.

I really wish I could offer some sort of guidance to you- but I really can't, and it would be wrong of me to pontificate on it- as I'm not sufficiently familiar with the legislation or historic case law, to offer you any guidance whatsoever.

You need to get professional advice.