Adoption

Adoption is a legal process that permanently transfers parental rights and responsibilities from a child’s legal parents to adoptive parents. It creates a parent-child relationship recognized by law.

Adoption home study: An assessment of prospective adoptive parents’ home, background, and readiness to care for a child. Authorities use it to assess prospective parents before approving a placement.
Parentage: The legal status of being recognized as someone’s parent. Adoption changes legal parentage rather than merely assigning caregiving duties.
Foster care: A temporary care arrangement for children who cannot safely live with their parents. Foster care may lead to adoption, but it does not itself permanently transfer parentage.
Adoptee: A person whose legal parentage was established through adoption. The adoptee’s legal and personal identity is directly affected by the adoption.
Consent to adoption: A legally required agreement to an adoption, usually given by a child’s legal parent or guardian. Valid consent can authorize the transfer of parental rights, subject to applicable law.
Parental responsibility: The legal rights and duties involved in making decisions and providing care for a child. Adoptive parents acquire parental responsibilities through the adoption.
Kinship care: Care for a child by relatives or other adults with an established family connection. A child may live with relatives without those caregivers becoming adoptive parents.
Adoption reunion: A renewed connection between an adopted person and members of their birth family. Some adoptees later seek contact with birth relatives, though contact is not guaranteed.
Termination of parental rights: A court action that permanently ends a parent’s legal rights and duties toward a child. Adoption generally requires existing parental rights to end before new ones are established.
Guardianship: A legal arrangement granting authority to care for another person without necessarily creating parentage. Guardianship can provide care and decision-making authority without adoption’s permanent parentage change.

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