Adult Adoption & Parental Consent

by Anonymous from Florida

Adult Adoption & Parental Consent: We are hoping to adopt a young man we have come to love and made a part of our family after his own parents abandoned him a few years ago, as soon as he reached 18, and moved 4000 miles away to the other side of the country. He is now 22.



He has suffered mental and physical abuse at the hands of his father for his whole childhood, but has still tried to be a good Christian and forgive his parents. We have two young teen daughters ourselves and they consider him to be their brother.

We want to know please - do we have to have the consent of his biological parents? Do they have to be notified? We don't even know where exactly they are living now anyhow so notifying them would present a problem.

Our reason for adopting him is so that he feels a part of a family for the first time in his life and if my husband and I got killed in an accident he could inherit our estate and take care of our daughters. Hope you can guide us, Thank you.

Answer to Florida Adoption Question

Dear Anonymous,

An adoption of an adult does not require the consent of the biological parents, but it does require that they be notified.

Many adult adoptions are for inheritance purposes, and this is perfectly well accepted and understood.

As far as locating the absent parents, there is a process called Diligent Search which you must go through to make every reasonable effort to locate them.

If you are unable to locate them, after searching, you may be able to serve them through constructive service. Constructive service is a publication of a legal intent.

Notice: We provide these answers to the general public and our website visitors as a means to further their online legal research. These answers are merely suggestions and should not be regarded as legal advice.

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