Opinion ID: 1958447
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Heading: The First Issue.

Text: Chapter 9 of Title 19 of our Revised Statutes deals with our adoption procedure. Section 532 provides that consent to an adoption may be given by the mother of an illegitimate child. In 1941 the Legislature, attempting to facilitate the mutual efforts of unmarried mothers and worthy institutions to find homes for illegitimate children when needed with the minimum of abrasion to the sensibilities of natural parent, child and adopting parents enacted P.L. 1941 section 287, now, as amended, the latter provisions of section 532. These provisions concerning surrender and release follow:    [T]he mother if such child be illegitimate, with the approval of the judge of probate of any county within the State and after a determination by such judge of probate that a surrender and release is for the best interests of all parties, may surrender and release all parental rights in and to such child and the custody and control thereof to an incorporated    society    child placing agency    for the purpose of enabling such    society   to have such child adopted by some suitable person.    The effect of this surrender and release shall be fully explained by the judge of probate to the parent   . The surrender and release approved as aforesaid shall be filed with the petition of adoption of said child in the probate court. In such cases the consent to adoption may be given by such incorporated society    or home   . Petitioner's release and the approval of the Judge of Probate were executed on Probate Form No. 66C. The Judge's approval reads: STATE OF MAINE       York, ss. The individual who executed the above SURRENDER AND RELEASE, having appeared before me and acknowledged that she executed the foregoing instrument as her act and deed by her own free will for the purpose therein mentioned: and, NOW having considered the circumstances connected with the foregoing SURRENDER AND RELEASE and having fully explained the effect thereof to said [name deleted]; it is hereby determined that such SURRENDER AND RELEASE is for the best interests of all parties concerned; and, NOW, therefore, said SURRENDER AND RELEASE is hereby approved in accordance with Title 19 M.R.S.A. Sections 531 to 538. The Justice in the Superior Court held that the surrender-release was invalid because requirements of section 532 had not been met. This conclusion appears to have been based in part upon a faulty remembrance of the evidence. It was the Justice's recollection that Petitioner had signed the surrender-release prepared by the Agency at the Agency office before she went before the Judge of Probate to receive his explanation of its significance and the Justice said he found no affirmative proof that she had been told by him that she could still revoke her act before the Judge gave his approval to the surrender. The Justice also noted that Probate Form No. 66C recites that the surrender had already been executed before the Judge of Probate gave his approval which, he found, in itself acknowledges a failure to comply with that part of section 532 which requires the Judge's approval before the mother may surrender her rights. However, the record (the benefit of which the Justice apparently did not have) disputes the Justice's recollection and discloses that the Petitioner in fact executed the surrender in the Judge's office and only after receiving from him a full explanation of the effects of her act. We have recognized that a Probate Court's power to decree an adoption is purely statutory and fails if any essential requirement of the statute is not complied with. Blue et al. v. Boisvert, 143 Me. 173, 57 A.2d 498 (1948). The same principle applies in the consideration of a surrender-release given in anticipation of adoption but only a failure to meet statutory requirements in a substantial respect would invalidate a surrender-release. In re Adoption of Anderson, 235 Minn. 192, 50 N.W. 2d 278 (1951); Petition of Gonzales, 330 Mich. 35, 46 N.W.2d 453 (1951). We do not find the phraseology of Form 66C to be at serious variance with the requirements of section 532. The statute contemplates a single, concerted act of surrender by the mother and of determination of the child's best interests by the Judge. The mother's act has no validity until she has acknowledged it before the Judge after receiving his full explanation as to its effect. The procedure is still incomplete until the Judge's approval is received but the order in which they sign does not control. Probate Form No. 66C is one of the blanks the use of which was authorized by statute (4 M.R.S.A. § 351) and approved by this Court on January 26, 1956. It has the force of law. Appeal of Waitt, 140 Me. 109, 34 A.2d 476 (1943); Baker v. Blood, 128 Mass. 543 (1879); In re Lucey, 331 Mass. 292, 118 N.E.2d 762 (1954). The failure of the recitation of Form 66C to conform precisely with the statute is not such a substantial deviation as would invalidate the surrender.