he Court of Appeal has rejected an attempt to have an adoption order revoked on welfare grounds, despite all family members supporting the move.
In Re X and Y, Sir Andrew McFarlane, president of the Family Division, said the court did not have jurisdiction to approve the application from the adoptive mother of two teenage siblings to legally end the adoption order.
The application had been supported by the children, now 17 and 16, and the birth mother, who had remained a part of their lives. Both siblings had told the High Court last April that they wished to be ‘unadopted’, but Mr Justice Lieven ruled the court lacked jurisdiction to revoke an adoption on purely welfare grounds.
McFarlane, sitting alongside Lord Justice Peter Jackson and Lord Justice Phillips, accepted that the children would be ‘profoundly upset’ by the outcome and admitted that if the court had a welfare-based jurisdiction then it would probably have been different.
