Opinion ID: 1711854
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 12

Heading: necessity of relinquishment

Text: Even if the county court had reached the issue whether B.P.'s relinquishment of Luke was valid, I do not agree with the majority's affirmance of the county court's judgment on that basis. In my opinion, the Nebraska adoption statutes do not support the majority's conclusion that B.P. was required to relinquish Luke before Luke was eligible for adoption by A.E. Neb.Rev.Stat. § 43-102 (Cum.Supp. 2000) provides, in relevant part, that any person or persons desiring to adopt a minor child or an adult child shall file a petition for adoption signed and sworn to by the person or persons desiring to adopt. The consent or consents required by sections 43-104 and 43-105 ... shall be filed prior to the hearing. Neb.Rev.Stat. § 43-104 (Cum.Supp.2000) in turn provides, in relevant part, that no adoption shall be decreed unless written consents thereto are filed in the court of the county in which the person or persons desiring to adopt reside and the written consents are executed by... the mother of a child born out of wedlock ... except that consent shall not be required of any parent who (a) has relinquished the child for adoption by a written instrument.... This section establishes a distinction between a consent and a relinquishment. Moreover, the statute clearly contemplates that there will be circumstances under which there is a consent to an adoption, but not a relinquishment. The statute states that a consent is required except when the biological parent has executed a relinquishment. If a relinquishment by a biological parent is necessary in all cases, then the statutory language requiring consent in all other cases would be a redundancy. The effect of a parental relinquishment is set forth in Neb.Rev.Stat. § 43-106.01 (Reissue 1998), which provides in relevant part: When a child shall have been relinquished by written instrument ... to the Department of Health and Human Services or to a licensed child placement agency ... the person so relinquishing shall be relieved of all parental duties toward and all responsibilities for such child and have no rights over such child. In addition, this court has held that in the case of private adoptions, a biological parent who relinquishes his or her rights to a child by a valid written instrument gives up all rights to the child at the time of the relinquishment. Yopp v. Batt, 237 Neb. 779, 467 N.W.2d 868 (1991). See, also, Gomez v. Savage, 254 Neb. 836, 580 N.W.2d 523 (1998). While § 43-106.01 and Yopp, supra, establish the legal effect of a voluntary relinquishment, they do not, however, provide that a relinquishment is required from a biological parent for a petition for a decree of adoption to be considered when that biological parent is one of the parties to the adoption petition. In the search for such a requirement, the majority relies on Neb.Rev.Stat. § 43-109 (Cum.Supp.2000), which provides in relevant part: If, upon the hearing, the court finds that such adoption is for the best interests of such minor child or such adult child, a decree of adoption shall be entered. No decree of adoption shall be entered unless (a) it appears that the child has resided with the person or persons petitioning for such adoption for at least six months next preceding the entering of the decree of adoption ... (c) the court record includes an affidavit or affidavits signed by the relinquishing biological parent, or parents if both are available, in which it is affirmed that, pursuant to section 43-106.02, prior to the relinquishment of the child for adoption, the relinquishing parent was, or parents if both are available were, (i) presented a copy or copies of the nonconsent form provided for in section 43-146.06 and (ii) given an explanation of the effects of filing or not filing the nonconsent form. The majority reads this section to imply that a relinquishment from a biological parent must be present in all cases. However, there are clearly circumstances in which there will not be such a relinquishment. The majority acknowledges that there need beindeed, can beno relinquishment when the biological parent's parental rights have been terminated and concludes that relinquishment is unnecessary in the case of a spousal second-parent adoption. There can also obviously be no relinquishment when the child's biological parents are deceased or the child has been abandoned. Because the Legislature could not have been unaware of these situations, it is evident that the Legislature could not have intended § 43-109 to require an affidavit from a relinquishing parent where there is no relinquishing parent. While § 43-109 requires that the record include affidavits from the relinquishing parents if there are relinquishing parents, the statute does not address when relinquishment is and is not necessary. Simply put, if there is a statutory source for the majority's conclusion that a relinquishment from a biological parent is required before a child is eligible for adoption, that source is not § 43-109. The majority further relies on Gray v. Maxwell, 206 Neb. 385, 293 N.W.2d 90 (1980), to support the conclusion that relinquishment is required. Gray does not support the construction placed upon it by the majority. In Gray, the biological mother brought a habeas corpus action seeking to regain custody of her minor child. The biological mother alleged that the relinquishment she had executed was invalid. The district court agreed and granted habeas relief. On appeal, we concluded that the biological mother's relinquishment had been given for consideration beyond the payment of her medical expenses and that the promise to pay for the child was against public policy and vitiated the relinquishment. Id. We remanded the cause for a hearing on the fitness of the biological mother. Id. The majority describes Gray as holding that in a private adoption case where the prospective adoptive parent was not a spouse of the biological parent, there must be a relinquishment by the biological parent and the relinquishment must be valid in order for the child to become eligible for adoption. Our opinion in Gray contains no basis for this assertion. Nebraska law provides that an adoption cannot go forward without the consent of the biological parent or a substitute for that consent, one possible form of which is relinquishment of parental rights. See § 43-104. In Gray, supra, the relinquishment was not valid and the biological mother obviously did not consent to the adoption. The question whether relinquishment was a jurisdictional prerequisite, with or without the consent of the biological parent, was not at issue. Not only does Gray not support the construction placed upon it by the majority, but Gray is inapposite to the instant case. In fact, the language used throughout the statutes and this court's jurisprudence dictate a conclusion contrary to that of the majority: Either a valid relinquishment or a consent to adoption suffices to permit a county court to entertain an adoption proceeding. See, e.g., Neb.Rev.Stat. §§ 43-107 (Cum.Supp.2000) and 43-104.09, 43-146.01, 43-164, and 43-1411 (Reissue 1998) (statutes referring to consent or relinquishment for purposes of adoption). Although or is not always used in the disjunctive, it is usually so considered, and that is its commonly accepted meaning. State ex rel. Finigan v. Norfolk Live Stock Sales Co., Inc., 178 Neb. 87, 132 N.W.2d 302 (1964). Based on this statutory language, we stated in In re Adoption of Kassandra B. & Nicholas B., 248 Neb. 912, 922, 540 N.W.2d 554, 560 (1995), that [c]hildren are not legally free for adoption unless both biological parents consent or one of the statutory exceptions to the need for their consent has been met. See, also, e.g., Kellie v. Lutheran Family & Social Service, 208 Neb. 767, 305 N.W.2d 874 (1981); Batt v. Nebraska Children's Home Society, 185 Neb. 124, 174 N.W.2d 88 (1970) (referring to requirement of consent or relinquishment). Thus, our cases have followed the general rule that while parental consent to an adoption of one's biological child is normally required for a valid adoption, such consent may not be required of a parent who has forfeited his or her parental rights by voluntary relinquishment. See 2 Am.Jur.2d Adoption § 74 (1994). This court's jurisprudence has previously been consistent with the scheme established by the adoption statutes, which permit an adoption to proceed if the biological parents consent or an exception to the consent requirement is present, with relinquishment of parental rights serving, not as an independent requirement, but simply as an exception to the consent requirement. If a biological parent relinquishes his or her parental rights, that relinquishment is immediately effective and irrevocable. See Gomez v. Savage, 254 Neb. 836, 580 N.W.2d 523 (1998). If there is no relinquishment but there is consent to the adoption, then the adoption proceeds to entry of the decree of adoption, at which point, the parental rights of the biological parent are, under most circumstances, extinguished. See Neb.Rev. Stat. §§ 43-106 and 43-111 (Reissue 1998). The statutes permit adoption without a relinquishment of parental rights where the biological parent is a party to the adoption petition, so long as the biological parent consents to the adoption or a substitute for that consent is provided. The majority's creation of a relinquishment requirement is contrary to the explicit language of the statutes and the dictates of our established jurisprudence. Furthermore, the majority expressly disclaims any ruling on the issue whether appellants could adopt jointly if B.P. actually relinquished her parental rights. The majority thus appears to leave the door open for appellants to effectively accomplish a second-parent adoption, but only by virtue of an unwieldy and illogical process. If the end result of an unmarried second-parent adoption is permitted, then it makes little sense to insist that the biological parent relinquish his or her rightswhen the parent has no real intention of doing soonly to further require that he or she ask in the petition for adoption to have those rights restored by the decree when they never should have been relinquished in the first place. Not only would this rule value form over substance, but it would expose the biological parent to a substantial risk. A relinquishment is irrevocable from its execution, and a conditional relinquishment is invalid. See, Yopp v. Batt, 237 Neb. 779, 467 N.W.2d 868 (1991); Auman v. Toomey, 220 Neb. 70, 368 N.W.2d 459 (1985). The mandate of relinquishment prior to adoption would require the biological parent to surrender his or her rights without any assurance that those rights would be restored. Since a biological parent is unlikely to assume that risk, a mandate of relinquishment in effect precludes many such adoptions from taking place. Moreover, there is no purpose to requiring a relinquishment to be given under such circumstances. Notably, the majority opines regarding the importance of `relinquishment' in the adoption statutes, but at no point endeavors to justify why relinquishment may be important, or explain how the purposes of the adoption statutes are advanced by the majority's interpretation of the statutes and application of that interpretation to the instant case. For instance, it is certainly appropriate to require that a parent expressly relinquish parental rights where an adoption is intended to completely sever the child's relationship with his or her birth parent and provide the child with a new family. Refusing to allow a parent to consent to an adoption while maintaining his or her own parental status, however, does not further the important goal of finality. Unlike other adoptions, second-parent adoptions are not subject to later attack by the consenting parent because that consenting parent neither has lost parental rights nor wishes to lose those rights through the adoption. See, generally, Theresa Glennon, Binding the Family Ties: A Child Advocacy Perspective on Second Parent Adoptions, 7 Temp. Pol. & Civ. Rts. L.Rev. 255 (1998). It simply serves no legitimate purpose to require a biological mother to relinquish her parental rights prior to the entry of a second-parent adoption under these circumstances. That, however, begs consideration of the other justification for the majority's holding: the conclusion that the termination provision of § 43-111 is inescapable unless the parties are married. I now turn to that analysis.