Legal issues

BC’s CHOICES Adoption Agency and the Victoria Fertility Centre have teamed up to provide an embryo donation service.

What this means is that people who have gone through infertility treatment and have spare embryos they don’t intend to use, and don’t want destroyed, can donate an embryo to another person. The embryos are frozen, which can affect the success rates of such procedures.

Lorne Welwood, executive director of Hope Adoption Services, explains why he thinks the new Citizenship Act still discriminate against adoptees.

The BC Public Guardian and Trustee (PGT) holds and manages any funds owned by children who are or were in the care of MCFD. Funds are usually held in trust by the PGT until a child turns 19. The PGT is also the legal guardian of children in foster care.

PGT and foster children

Every permanent ward of MCFD has an assigned Guardianship and Trust Officer (GTO). Social workers must find out who the GTO is for each child on their caseload.

The Adoption Act 1996, regulates adoptions in BC, and is specific about what birth mother expenses prospective adoptive parents might expect to pay [see sidebar]. Medical expenses related to the prenatal care and birth of the baby are not usually covered unless the mother doesn't have medical coverage from any other source. Thankfully, our Medical Services Plan will almost always cover these expenses.

This is not the case in the United States—a fact that prospective adoptive parents considering US adoption need to consider.

Adoptive families exploring international adoption often wonder why "facilitators" are necessary in addition to their licensed adoption agency. This article explains what they do and gives advice to families who may work with a facilitator.

Not all international adoptions involve facilitators, but many do. Their functions vary, depending on the procedures required in the child’s country of origin. The facilitator usually arranges for translation and authentication of documents.

It is difficult to conceive why new adoptive parents would not receive employee benefits equal to those biological parents enjoy. As every adoptive parent knows, the process of bringing children home for the first time, introducing them to their new home, and establishing a strong parent-child bond, takes considerable time and work.

However, employers still don’t offer new adoptive parents the same employee benefits as biological parents, particularly in respect to those employers that top up the Employment Insurance payments given by the Canadian government.

In a recent interview with a social worker with the Ministry for Children and Family Development, it was stated that the majority of children in care of the Ministry are there because of parental drug and alcohol use. Hair, urine, and meconium testing is becoming more and more influential in child custody cases and when the Ministry is determining whether children should be returned or removed from the home.

On November 19, 2004, Lauryn Galindo, a Seattle intercountry adoption facilitator, was sentenced to 18 months in prison for the child trafficking of hundreds of Cambodian children.

We are planning to adopt a baby and have heard stories about birth fathers coming forward at the last minute, to disrupt adoptions. What is the situation if this happens?
As with all questions involving the law, an accurate answer begins with, “it depends.” The first thing it depends on is where the child (and birth father) reside. Different countries, and even different provinces or states, have differing laws and procedures. For the purpose of this response, I will assume all parties live in BC.

Though they are rare, and most adoptions go through seamlessly, revocations by birth parents happen.

In BC, birth parents have 30 days from the time their child is born to change their minds and decide to parent their child.

Usually those 30 days pass by, albeit slowly, and the parents can breathe a sigh of relief. For others, it’s not quite so simple.