An Important Precedential Adoption Standing Case
We don’t write much about adoption. It’s a difficult subject. When this writer began the practice of law in the 1980s adoption was about young people who became pregnant and realized they were too young to successfully parent. Then it switched over to adoption of children from places like South America and China. In recent years the appellate adoption world has seen an avalanche of cases terminating rights of parents who want their children but don’t seem to be able to manage their own lives. Courts have been more aggressive in terminating the rights of those parents. Having litigated that from both sides, it is tragic. We have a generation of children 20-40 that have children, but no clue.
This brings us to Interest of O.E.C.-A. decided on February 13, 2025 as 2025 Pa. Super. 32. There are three children ages 12, 10 and 6. The Department of Human Services in Philadelphia and York Counties have been involved since 2018, just before the youngest child was born. This has an unusual wrinkle in that the grandparents were alleged to be not a solution to the problem, but violent toward the kids in their own right. When mother insisted on resuming a live-in arrangement with the grandparents despite D.H.S. concerns, the court ordered foster care. When the third child was born D.H.S. asked that that child be put in foster care because the situation was so unsettled. Custody of that youngest child was awarded to E.B.. Thirty months after the two elder children went into foster care and a bit over a year after the youngest was placed with E.B., the goal of the placement was changed from reunification to adoption. A year after that the court terminated the rights of the parents and headed toward the adoption. An appeal followed. In 2022 the Superior Court upheld those orders and in November 2022 the Supreme Court declined to review the termination order that the Superior Court had affirmed.
The facts become murky which is a problem when you have a published opinion. Suffice to say that the person proposing to adopt two of the three children had already adopted the youngest one. But D.H.S. took the position that she lacked standing to adopt the other two siblings because she had nothing more than agreed “visitation” with the two elder siblings of the child she adopted.
The pivotal decision in this case was a Supreme Court ruling in Interest of K.N.L 284 A3.d 121 (2022). There the court held that anyone can proceed with adoption so long as that person has a direct, substantial and immediate interest in the subject adoptee and the D.H.S. need not have to consent to the proceedings. In fact that consent is not really a consideration in such proceedings. The 20 visits arranged between the elder children with E.B. was deemed sufficient.
I have not been a frequent flier in the world of adoption where D.H.S. is involved. But where I have been involved there is a certain “We know best” arrogance to the positions adopted by the agency. This might have more traction if the caseloads were less overwhelming and the agency could afford to retains lots of talented and experienced social workers. There are a lot of people dedicated to the cause of children but often you are often negotiating with people who may have a degree in childhood development but no practical hands on child rearing experience. That’s where it gets difficult. We have a quiet parenting crisis in America because young people seem overwhelmed by the task and inclined to put their needs first. Grandparents are frequently a go to resource but courts are finding even that generation can bring controversy where stability is what children crave. The system is chaotic but courts are moving beyond trying to “fix” parents in favor of substitute parents as this case demonstrates.