Opinion ID: 2520814
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Under ICWA, Andrea Should Have Been Permitted To Withdraw Her Initial Consent to Adoption Prior to Entry of the Final Adoption Decree.

Text: Under ICWA, a biological parent may withdraw consent to adoption for any reason at any time prior to the entry of final decree of ... adoption ... and the child shall be returned to the parent. [53] Because Andrea changed her mind prior to the final decree of adoption and wanted Keith back despite her earlier consent to adoption by the Wilsons, Keith should have been returned to Andrea at the time she withdrew her consent. However, this point is now moot, given that Andrea has reaffirmed her consent to the adoption during the pendency of this appeal. If we did not treat Andrea's initial conditional relinquishment of parental rights in favor of adoption by a specific couple as a consent to adoption, we would eviscerate a key ICWA provision. The statutory consent provisions provide for a relatively lengthy parental withdrawal period and are designed to protect the natural rights of a parent to the custody, society, comfort, and services of the child. [54] Permitting circumvention of these protections by pre-adoption relinquishment in private party adoption cases would eliminate these protections of parental rights. [55] And if allowing such an end run would impair the rights of parents in non-ICWA cases, it would do even greater injury to the rights granted by ICWA to Indian families and the parents of Indian children. Because Andrea has ratified the adoption by reaffirming her consent to have Keith adopted by the Wilsons, we must now turn to the question whether the superior court properly deviated from ICWA's placement preferences.