Adoption and international adoption
Osbornes has a team headed by Naomi Angell in this particularly specialised area of children’s law. Naomi Angell, Mark Freedman, and Bridget Thompson all specialise in domestic and step parent adoption and, in addition, Naomi Angell is a specialist in international adoption. She is assisted by solicitor Anest Mathias. Naomi is chair of an adoption panel and lectures, writes and is involved with media work on domestic and international adoption. In our adoption casework we advise and represent adoptive parents, birth parents, children and other relatives.
In some circumstances, particularly where the family have been involved in social services or care proceedings, children are not able to carrying on living with their natural parents. The alternative can be adoption, when the natural parents will lose their parental responsibility for the child, and the full rights and duties of a parent are acquired by the adoptive family. These cases involve difficult and sensitive issues and the Osbornes adoption team has the knowledge and experience required.
Step parents may feel that it is in their step child’s best interests to be adopted, so that they are fully integrated into their new family. Step parent adoption may be the best solution for a child, but there are also other options which we can advise on, which give the step parent legal status and recognition of their involvement with their step child, but enable the child’s relationship with the non-resident birth parent to continue.
This is a complex and highly specialist area of law. The service that we offer ranges from:-
- General advice to families considering international adoption, and bringing a child back to the UK. Our clients include British families living here, ex-patriot British nationals wishing to return to the UK with their adopted child in the future, and foreign nationals (EU or non EU nationals) living in this country and wishing to adopt internationally while they are here.
- Advice on the duties and actions of local authorities or other adoption agencies here in relation to international adoptions.
- Representing adopters in adoption proceedings in the courts in this country, where the foreign adoption is not recognised by the UK.
- Advising and representing families wishing to take a child out of the country for adoption elsewhere.
- Providing specialist legal opinions for lawyers or authorities either here or abroad on the law relating to international adoption in this country.
