Here’s the situation: I am a 21 year old female and have been living with my aunt and uncle in New Hampshire since I was 17. They have all but adopted me, taking me in from an emotionally abusive home situation. I have little to no contact with my actual parents, and I feel as though my aunt and uncle and their kids are my family. We have recently been thinking over the concept of adult adoption to officially sever ties with my birth family and legitimize my place in the family.
My question is this: What might we not be thinking about that may be an issue? We have discussed a little bit about inheritance, but other than that, we’ve mainly just been getting used to the idea.
Since you’re now an adult, and not obligated to have anything to do with your birth parents, what would be the point of “disowning” them? I can understand the emotional issue, but is there anything beyond that?
You can always change your name legally (if their last name is different from yours) and they can do whatever they want legally to provide for you. One of them is part of your birth family, right?
It is mostly just the emotional aspect, panache45. I feel strongly connected to my aunt and uncle and very very distant from my birth family. They have done so very much for me, and have been there for me in ways that my birth parents never were. Honestly, it’s less about “disowning” my birth parents, and more about confirming our bond as family. (“Our” referring to myself and my aunt and uncle and the kids, of course.)
I do occasionally have concerns that somehow being legally seen as part of my birth family may, at some point in the future, have consequences. That probably has no actual factual backing, though, and has very little to bear on the decision at hand.
I did change my name about a year after I moved in with them, even though my uncle is the one who is the blood relative, gigi. I took my aunt’s maiden name. I am, in everything but the legal sense, adopted by them.
Are you attending/planning to attend college? Would your aunt and uncle be considered financially responsible for your education? I wonder about this, as I have considered formally adopting my 19 yr old foster daughter (for the reasons you mention, for emotional reasons and to simplify inheritance). I do help her financially, but I fear the FAFSA.
Actually, Ms. Meta, that’s one of the big reasons they didn’t adopt me when I came to live with them. They have two small kids, and with the cost of college and the suddenness of my arrival, they were in no way prepared to take on any of my college expenses, and if they had adopted me then, I would have had to put their information on my FAFSA. Since then, things have changed, and since they were my legal guardians at one point, that information no longer needs to be provided. Which is not actually helpful at this point considering I’m going into senior year.
I thought that being in foster care at any time after your 13th birthday entitles you to be able to omit parental tax information from the FAFSA. You might want to check that out, especially if that’s the only thing that’s holding you back. I really respect you and all others who are foster parents. In fact, I have recently considered that as an option for myself in the future. I would love to be able to help and support someone as my aunt and uncle have done for me. They have truly become my family.
I could imagine an instance where your birth parents are seriously injured, or die and leave behind a lot of messy financial or legal shenanigans, which you (as next of kin) could be made responsible for. Or if not made responsible for, you’d at least have to deal with it, even if it’s only as far as saying “I have nothing to do with them.”
I’m curious about the concept of adult adoption. I didn’t know such a thing existed. With… normal adoption, the parents (if there are parents) are signing over their parental rights to somebody else. So in your case, would your birth parents have to sign something? If not, couldn’t some plucky con artist cozy up to some wealthy old people and get them to adult adopt him so he could claim the inheritance?
Sorry, I can’t think of anything without turning it into a plot of a bad novel.
Sounds like you’re way ahead of me, then.
In my case, the Kidlet was never formally placed in foster care. CPS removed her, placed her in the local children’s shelter, from which she promptly called me. I showed up and the authorities gave her (alcoholic) mother the choice of doing things the easy way or the hard way. So I was granted temporary guardianship. Kidlet was 16-1/2 when she came to stay with me and left for the other side of the country the day after turning 18, because it was too stressful being in the same town as her mother. I took her in without knowing what I was getting into, and she just wanted to be anywhere except under her mother’s roof. Without intending to, we nevertheless formed a very strong bond. I had known her for a few years and often thought that if I were guaranteed a kid like this one, I would have had children. So I think I’m about the luckiest person in the world.
As to the poster(s) who may wonder why adults would do this - I guess it is variations on what the OP describes. In my case, my parents had recently passed away and I am not particularly close to the rest of my family. I was approaching 40 and realizing I was unlikely to have biological children. Kidlet has an alcoholic mother and an estranged father married to your classic evil abusive stepmother. Oh, two half-siblings I think she may have met once fifteen years ago.
Bio-mom still drinks and is in poor health on account of that. Kidlet worries, justifiably so, that her mother could die soon. If that happens, maybe we could re-form as a new little unit. Not that I could take her mother’s place - they did have their good mother-daughter times - but because it is just nice to feel you belong somewhere, isn’t it?
Back to the OP, I guess another question is whether it is legal in your state. My admittedly cursory research into this topic is that not all states allow adult adoptions.
It sounds like your cousins/siblings are still rather young. Are they old enough to understand and participate in these conversations? From the POV of the parents, since you are now an adult you’d probably be the likely first choice for guardianship of the young’uns if needed (God forbid). Being a legal sister rather than a cousin-who’s-just-like could be important in that regard.
Give your folks, especially your Aunt Mom, a big hug for me.
There’s the opposite problem too - if the OP was badly injured or seriously ill, and could not make decisions on her own about her care, in the absense of a Medical Power of Attorney it would be her birth parents making the decisions, not her “adoptive” ones. IANAL, but bindera, that sounds more like what you want to do - declare your Aunt & Uncle to be your “next of kin” for legal purposes, so your birth parents get no say over you should something terrible happen.
If they adopted you, would you have your birth certificate changed? It’s a super-minor issue, and I’m 100% behind the desire to have the people who acted as parents to you be “officially” your parents, but, you might want to think about the records you are leaving behind for future generations.
If, say, your great-great-grandchildren are researching their family history, would it be important to you that they understand your aunt and uncle to be their great-great-great grandparents, or would you rather they know their biological ancestry?
Excellent point. If you do not immediately decode to go for adult adoption, bindera, do strongly consider a durable health care power of attorney naming them – most family law lawyers will be able to generate one for minimal cost. This is something to do as soon as possible Also consider a will and other ancillary documents – I’ll bet one of our gay memebers from your area can identify what documents are needed/useful from having had to undertake them with his/her partner. (Though the two relationships are not completely on all fours, in both cases we are talking about transferring the power to act in your behalf/inherit/etc. from birth family to someone not legally otherwise recognized as next-of-kin without such documentation.)
Also in your future plans do think strongly about adoption or foster care. It’s my understanding that adoptive/foster kids, grown up, make some of the best adoptive/foster parents – they’ve “been there, done that, got the T-shirt” so to speak.
My brother has something of a similar case. He’s not related to me in any way by blood, but he’s still my brother. He had a tough family situation, and over the years has been “adopted” into mine, but no legal relationship exists. He calls me and my sister his sisters, my parents are “Mom” & “Dad” to him, I consider his wife to be my sister-in-law, the whole schmear.
I believe my mother and father did briefly entertain the idea of legally adopting him, but as the procedure wouldn’t have been completed until after he turned 18, they decided the whole thing was a bit moot by that point. It seems to me that adoption is something that’s only valid while the adoptee is still a minor; it simply doesn’t really make sense after you reach the age of majority. Instead, adults have a whole other set of avenues available to them to set up relationships in the eyes of the law: wills, directives, powers of attorney, and so on.
If I were you, I’d look into setting these types of structures up instead of going through with an adoption.
My birth parents do not have to be involved in this decision at all, at least according to the rules in my state (New Hampshire). Different states have different guidelines, I have gathered. The parties involved have to go before a judge in order to formalize the process. That might deter con artists, I suppose.
Ms. Meta, I believe that legal guardianship also counts as long as you had the legal guardianship directly before she turned 18. Definitely something to check out, just in case.
My cousins are 6 and 3, don’t mind me. I am sure that they will be involved at some point before anything is official. That’s a very interesting question I should raise with them. My aunt’s parents live in town, so I assume they’re the designated guardians should anything happen. However, once I get established with a decent job, I could be a pretty good candidate as well. They are awesome kids and I love them to death.
The Power of Attorney suggestion is interesting. If we don’t end up doing the adoption, that would be a really great idea.
As for the birth certificate issue, Black Sunshine, yes, they do issue another one. That is a very intriguing point, especially since my uncle is related to me by blood. I guess they would be able to track at least one side of the family accurately! I wonder if there would be some way to keep that information available for any descendants I might have.
If you get a new birth certificate, that should solve any of the problems I’m thinking of but am unable to formulate into actual words.
Some kind of worst-case scenario might be that you later become very wealthy, die early, and your birth parents could try to make some kind of claim to the estate by waving the birth certificate around. New birth cert would fix that.
If you ever ran for president, though, there might be trouble.
