Opinion ID: 1473555
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: whether an unmarried couple is eligible to adopt a child

Text: As indicated in the statement of facts and proceedings, although Bruce and Mark were living together at the time Hillary joined them, Bruce alone petitioned for Hillary's adoption, which the court granted. Later, in a partially redundant exercise, both Bruce and Mark petitioned to adopt Hillary, and Bruce, in addition, formally consented to Mark's joining in the petition. As will become clear from our statutory analysis, this particular approach reflects an understandable effort to cover all the bases, so to speak, in advocating the eligibility of an unmarried couple to adopt a child in the District of Columbia. In reality, therefore, despite Bruce's initial, separate adoption of Hillary, the parties seek a way for them jointly to adopt her, and that is how we conceptualize this case. For reasons that we shall explain more fully once the statutory framework and related issues become more focused, this case is not better interpreted, more narrowly, as a petition filed by a single, unmarried person, Mark, seeking to adopt Hillary while using Bruce's consent to preserve Bruce's preexisting parental rights. The result should be the same whether members of an unmarried couple living together in a committed personal relationship seek to adopt sequentially or simultaneously. This, then, is the perspective from which we viewand decidethe case.
Three provisions of the adoption statute are relevant to determining whether more than one person may lawfully adopt a child and, if so, whether an unmarried couple [2] is eligible. D.C.Code § 16-302 (1989 Repl.) (captioned Persons who may adopt) provides: [1] Any person may petition the court for a decree of adoption. [2] A petition may not be considered by the court unless petitioner's spouse, if he [or she] has one, joins in the petition, except that [3] if either the husband or wife is a natural parent of the prospective adoptee, the natural parent need not join in the petition with the adopting parent, but need only give his or her consent to the adoption. [4] If the marital status of the petitioner changes after the time of filing the petition and before the time the decree of adoption is final, the petition must be amended accordingly. [Emphasis added.] D.C.Code § 16-305 (captioned Petition for adoption) lists the categories of information a petitioner must supply and then concludes: If more than one petitioner joins in a petition, the requirements of this section apply to each. [Emphasis added.] Finally, D.C.Code § 16-312 (captioned Legal effects of adoption) provides in paragraph (a): A final decree of adoption establishes the relationship of natural parent and natural child between adopter and adoptee for all purposes, including mutual rights of inheritance and succession as if adoptee were born to adopter. The adoptee takes from, through, and as a representative of his [or her] adoptive parent or parents in the same manner as a child by birth, and upon the death of an adoptee intestate, his [or her] property shall pass and be distributed in the same manner as if the adoptee had been born to the adopting parent or parents in lawful wedlock. [2A] All rights and duties including those of inheritance and succession between the adoptee, his [or her] natural parents, their issue, collateral relatives, and so forth, are cut off, [2B] except that when one of the natural parents is the spouse of the adopter, the rights and relations as between adoptee, that natural parent, and his [or her] parents and collateral relatives, including mutual rights of inheritance and succession, are in no wise altered. [Emphasis added.] The first questionwhether it is legally possible for an unmarried couple, see supra note 2, to adopt a childfocuses our attention, initially, on § 16-302, which governs who may adopt. The trial judge interpreted this provision to exclude the possibility of adoption by an unmarried couple because (in the judge's words) the institution of adoption as a creation of statute, not of common law, must be strictly construed, and there is no discernable legislative intent to extend the right and privilege of adoption to more than one unmarried person at a time. [3] In other words, reasoned the judge, because there is no basis for inferring that Congress affirmatively intended to permit a child's adoption by more than one unmarried adult i.e., because, according to the judge, there is an absence of specific legislative intentthe court must conclude that Congress rejected the possibility and thus has not authorized it. There is an unconvincing leap of reasoning here. An absence of specific legislative intent does not always mean the legislature thought about something and rejected it; the omission also can mean the legislature did not think about the idea at all, and thus took no position on it. It is unclear whether the trial judge considered this latter possibility, but it appears from her analysis that she believed it is irrelevant whether Congress thought about adoptions by unmarried couples. She seemed to be saying, rather, that the controlling fact is what the statute says; it does not expressly provide for such adoptions; end of case. The trial judge reached her result by making a decision to employ strict construction, meaning, to apply the law as it is written, without undue extension by interpretation. Brown v. United States, 66 A.2d 491, 493 (D.C.1949). According to strict construction doctrine, [t]he courts have consistently held legislation derogative of the common law accountable to an exactness of expression and have not allowed the effects of such legislation to be extended beyond the necessary and unavoidable meaning of its terms. Scharfeld v. Richardson, 76 U.S.App.D.C. 378, 379, 133 F.2d 340, 341 (1942). The judge, however, just as easily could have opted for a liberal interpretation, meaning [t]he statutory provisions, where ambiguous, are to be construed liberally to effectuate the beneficial purposes that Congress had in mind. United States v. Zazove, 334 U.S. 602, 610, 68 S.Ct. 1284, 1288, 92 L.Ed. 1601 (1948). This court itself has emphasized that the rule that statutes in derogation of the common law are to be strictly construed does not require such adherence to the letter as would defeat an obvious legislative purpose or lessen the scope plainly intended to be given to the meaning. District of Columbia v. Thompson, 593 A.2d 621, 632 (D.C.1991) (citation omitted). The Supreme Court, moreover, has made the point even more emphatically: The canon in favor of strict construction is not an inexorable command to override common sense and evident statutory purpose.... [T]he canon does not require distortion or nullification of the evident meaning and purpose of the legislation. United States v. Brown, 333 U.S. 18, 25-26, 68 S.Ct. 376, 380, 92 L.Ed. 442 (1948) (citation and internal quotation marks omitted). With particular reference to adoption statutes, many courts have shown a preference for liberal over strict construction, as the cases collected below in the margin reveal. [4] The point here is not to say, summarily, that the trial judge's approach is wrong; rather, we merely point out that another, respectable approach is available and that a more in-depth look at the statute is required than mere election between conflicting general rules of construction.
This court, in Peoples Drug Stores v. District of Columbia, 470 A.2d 751 (D.C.1983) (en banc), has prescribed a comprehensive approach to statutory interpretation. Initially, the court must look at the language of the statute by itself to see if the language is plain and admits of no more than one meaning, since the primary and general rule of statutory construction is that the intent of the lawmaker is to be found in the language that he [or she] has used. Id. at 753 (citations and internal quotation marks omitted). We added, however, that this plain language or plain meaning rule is the first, but not always the last or the most illuminating step in statutory analysis. Id. at 754. We then outlined situations in which courts properly look beyond the plain meaning of statutory language. Id.: First, even where the words of a statute have a superficial clarity, a review of the legislative history or an in-depth consideration of alternative constructions that could be ascribed to statutory language may reveal ambiguities that the court must resolve .... Second, the literal meaning of a statute will not be followed when it produces absurd results.... Third, whenever possible, the words of a statute are to be construed to avoid obvious injustice. Finally, a court may refuse to adhere strictly to the plain wording of a statute in order to effectuate the legislative purpose,... as determined by a reading of the legislative history or by an examination of the statute as a whole.... Id. (citations and internal quotation marks omitted). We concluded by warning that these four exceptions to the plain meaning rule should not be understood to swallow the rule completely, since there are strong policy reasons why everyone should be able to rely on what the statutory language, as commonly understood, appears to say. Id. at 755. Accordingly, we said, a court should look beyond the ordinary meaning of the words of a statute only where there are persuasive reasons for doing so. Id. (citations and internal quotation marks omitted).
We turn to the statutory language at issue, quoted above in Part III. B. Without doubt, under the adoption statute more than one person may lawfully adopt a child. Although the first sentence of D.C.Code § 16-302 is expressed in the singularAny person may petition the court for a decree of adoptionthe balance of that section acknowledges adoption by spouses who join[ ] in the petition. Furthermore, D.C.Code § 16-305, which specifies the information required in an adoption petition, refers at the end to more than one petitioner who join in a petition. Finally, D.C.Code § 16-312(a), which prescribes the legal effects of adoption, refers to the adopting parent or parents (as well as to a special rule that applies when one of the natural parents is the spouse of the adopter). Thus, the question is not whether, in the abstract, more than one person may adopt a child but rather, more concretely, whether in all instances when two persons seek to adopt they must be married to each other. [5] The adoption statute is unclear. D.C.Code § 16-302 expressly allows [a]ny person of any status, not just a married person, to petition for adoption. Moreover, § 16-305 acknowledges adoptions by more than one petitioner, not merely by two spouses or by a husband and wife. This neutral language in §§ 16-302 and -305, therefore, arguably leaves room for joint petitions by unmarried couples. But there is a hitch; various references in § 16-302 to spouse, husband, wife, and marital status muddy the picture. The question is, do the § 16-302 provisions requiring a petitioner's spouse, if he [or she] has one, to join[ ] in the petition, except when the husband or wife is a natural parent of the prospective adoptee, imply that only couples who are married may adopt children? Before we try to answer that question, we note that another statute becomes relevant here. A prescribed statutory rule[ ] of construction, D.C.Code § 49-202 (1990 Repl.), provides: Words importing the singular number shall be held to include the plural, and vice versa, except where such construction would be unreasonable. This statute was enacted in 1901 [6] and thus automatically became a legislatively mandated rule of ... construction [7] of the adoption statute we construe here, enacted over half a century later in 1954. [8] If its application to the adoption statute would not be unreasonable, § 49-202 would appear to clinch the argument that § 16-302 authorizes adoptions by unmarried couples, because this authorizing provision would then read: Any persons may petition the court for a decree of adoptionan unequivocal statement of eligibility unfettered by subsequent language in § 16-302 specifying what happens when a married person seeks to adopt. Without further analysis, however, we cannot say that § 49-202 is conclusive; it will not turn singular into plural, expressly authorizing adoption by two unmarried persons, if that construction would be unreasonable. Id. This reasonableness requirement is a categorical, not a case-by-case, limitation that effectively turns the analysis back to interpretation of the adoption statute itself. With that said, however, the overall structure of § 49-202a general rule subject to an exceptionsuggests that the rule presumptively applies. This means that the burden falls on those who would strictly construe the adoption statute to demonstrate persuasively why it would be unreasonable, id., for a court to hold that unmarried couples are eligible to adopt under § 16-302. [9] We therefore begin the reasonableness analysis by returning to the language of the adoption statute. As we have indicated, the principal obstacle to expansive interpretation of § 16-302 is found in the language of that section that specifically refers to spouse, to husband and wife, and to marital status. See supra Part III. B. More specifically, § 16-302 identifies three adoption categories: adoption by [a]ny person, who need not be married; adoption by one spouse when the other spouse is the natural parent (in which case the natural parent must merely consent to the adoption), and adoption by a married couple, neither of whom is the child's natural parent, and thus both of whom must join[ ] in the petition. For several reasons, however, the fact that § 16-302 expressly recognizes three categories of adoptions does not conclusively answer whether these are the only permissible kinds of adoptions. In the first placeand of considerable significanceCongress unquestionably knew how to limit adoptions by two persons to married couples, as it expressly did in the 1895 adoption statute (a person or a husband and wife may adopt). [10] But Congress chose not to do so. [11] Second, by using a series of ifs (if the petitioner has a spouse; if either spouse is a natural parent; if the marital status changes), Congress formulated § 16-302 in a way that leaves room for inferring that the two identified types of adoptions involving couples are particular examples, requiring special rules; they are not necessarily exclusive descriptions limiting adoptions to couples who are married. This lack of implied exclusiveness is evident from the fact that there are sound reasons why the partner of an unmarried adoption petitioner, while permitted to join in the petition, should not necessarily be required to do so. A legislature, for example, might prefer to leave the trial court with discretion to make an ad hoc determination of the solidity of an unmarried relationship sufficient for a joint adoption, rather than trying to spell out such criteria in adoption legislation. We do not say that Congress took that approach here; we say only that, by specifying joint participation requirements for married couples, Congress did not necessarily imply that it was addressing the only situation in which couples were eligible to adopt, since the rules applicable to married couples would not necessarily be right for all adopting couples when one member seeks to adopt a child. Third, the term adoption itself implies no self-evident limitation on who may adopt. Recently we noted that a marriage, according to the ordinary sense and meaning traditionally attributed to the word, does not include a same-sex couple, and thus partly for this reason we concluded that Congress, in enacting the marriage statute without specific limitation to heterosexual couples, could not have intended to include same-sex couples. See Dean v. District of Columbia, 653 A.2d 307, 315 (D.C.1995) (citations omitted). In contrast, the idea of adoption does not suggest an inherent, traditional limitation on who may adopt; we cannot use an ordinary meaning of adoption to say that Congress assuredly made unmarried couples ineligible to adopt. See Adoption of Tammy, 416 Mass. 205, 619 N.E.2d 315, 319 n. 4 (1993). [12] Indeed, theoretically, an adult child is eligible under the statute to adopt a parent, or a brother his sister, subject of course to a court's rejection of the proposal on the facts presented. The point is, courts over the years have entertained all sorts of adoption petitions to create non-standard families, granting some and denying others in the prospective adoptee's best interests. See supra note 12. Finally, whether Congress intended to limit adoptions by couples to those who are married, or did not give any thought to the matter, the fact is that the level of generality of the language used in the present adoption statute, in contrast with the 1895 statute even without regard to the dictates of D.C.Code § 49-202 converting singular words to the plural unless unreasonable leaves plenty of room under D.C.Code § 16-302 for extending adopter eligibility to unmarried couples. The Supreme Court has emphasized that, [w]hile a statute speaks from its enactment, [it] embraces everything which subsequently falls within its scope. Browder v. United States, 312 U.S. 335, 339-40, 61 S.Ct. 599, 602, 85 L.Ed. 862 (1941). And this court has said in a similar vein: The object of a statute may be so general and its language so broad as to reach conditions fairly coming within its intent and sweep although such conditions did not come into existence until years after its enactment. Rosenberg v. United States, 297 A.2d 763, 765 (D.C.1972). We do not say that the statutory language definitely permits adoption by unmarried couples; we say that the statute, by virtue of its multiple uses of neutral, general language, can comfortably be read to embrace such adoptions. [13] At this point in the analysis, therefore, we are not able to say either that the adoption statute plainly, i.e., conclusively, allows adoption by an unmarried couple or that the statute plainly limits joint adoption to a husband and wife (as the 1895 statute did). The language gaps and generalities create too much ambiguity to require either interpretation. Any inference that marriage is required before a couple may adopt, based solely on the language in § 16-302 referring to marital status, is a weak inference at best. Indeed, our analysis thus far has revealed an alternative construction[ ] ascribable to the statutory language, Peoples Drug Stores, 470 A.2d at 754namely, an interpretation derived from the statute's neutral, inclusive language applied in the context of a paramount concern for the best interests of the childwhich suggests just as reasonable an inference that adoptions by unmarried couples are not automatically precluded. Accordingly, the trial court's statutory interpretation that bars the adoption here is based, at best, on superficial clarity. Id. Pursuant to the first exception to the plain meaning rule, therefore, we must address the statutory ambiguities, id., by consulting legislative history. See supra Part III. C.
Before 1895, when Congress enacted its first adoption statute, [14] adoptions were unavailable in the District of Columbia because adoption was not possible at common law. [15] The 1895 Act is interesting in that, as originally proposed, the bill simply authorized a petition for adoption by a person. [16] It was amended on the House floor to permit adoption by a person or a husband and wife, in order to remove any doubt as to whether both could join in the petition. [17] Congress repealed the 1895 Act and adopted the first comprehensive adoption statute for the District in 1937. [18] The new statute contained no provision specifying who was entitled to adopt, although it required the petition to state whether the petitioner is married or single and precluded consideration of a petition unless petitioner's spouse join[ed] in the petition or consent[ed] to the adoption. [19] No longer, therefore, were petitioners expressly limited to a person or a husband and wife. The 1937 Act also provided that a final adoption decree would establish the relation of natural parent and natural child for all purposes, provided that an adopted child could not inherit from the parents or collateral relatives of the child's adoptive parents. [20] The statute, however, added an exception to that limitation: in the event that one of the natural parents was the spouse of petitioner, the adoptee would retain the rights of inheritance and succession from that parent, as well as from related grandparents and collateral relatives. [21] Aside from minor exceptions the adoption statute was not amended until 1954, [22] when Congress repealed the 1937 Act with a comprehensive statutory revision. [23] As to the kinds of requirements at issue in this case, there were four noteworthy changes. First, the 1954 statute reinstituted a provision on persons who may adopt (now D.C.Code § 16-302), but, in contrast with enactment of the 1895 statute, Congress used language that is completely neutral: Any person may petition the court for a decree of adoption (emphasis added). Second, the 1954 statute more directly stated (now in D.C.Code § 16-302) that a natural parent married to the petitioner need only consent to, rather than join in, the adoption. Third, in the provision (now D.C.Code § 16-305) that prescribed the requirements for an adoption petition, Congress added another neutral sentence, not found in the 1895 and 1937 statutes, expressly recognizing petitions filed by more than one petitionera retreat even further than in 1937 from the 1895 terminology, husband and wife. Fourth, the provision governing inheritance rights (now D.C.Code § 16-312) was changed. Under the 1954 Act, the adopted child now inherits from grandparents and collateral relatives as though he or she were a child by birth of the adoptive parents. See D.C.Code § 16-312(a). The 1954 Act also confirms that, upon adoption, all rights of inheritance and succession between the child and the natural parents are cut off, except when one of the natural parents is the spouse of the adopting parent. Id. It is important to add that only in connection with the 1895 Act did any member of Congress speak on the record about the scope of the provision governing who is entitled to adopt. Nowhere in any committee report, from either House of Congress, nor in any speech on the House or Senate floor, was there any discussion in 1937 or in 1954 about who is entitled to adopt; the statutory language is left to speak for itself. [24] With that said, however, it is important to reemphasize that in 1895 the statute referred to a person or a husband and wife joining in an adoption, whereas in 1954 the statute was drafted to refer neutrally, in § 16-302, to a petition by [a]ny person, and, in § 16-305, to a petition by more than one petitioner. These substantial language differences between the 1895 and 1954 approaches (separated in time by much less specific language, either way, in the 1937 statute) are significant; they show that Congress can speak precisely about who, as a couple, can adopt, and that Congress chose not to do so in the present statute. See supra notes 11 and 13. What was once plain language no longer is, and thus the indications are that Congress, by selecting neutral language to describe adoption petitioners in general, has now left roomwittingly [25] or unwittingly [26] for an unmarried couple, as well as for a husband and wife, to join in an adoption. [27] This shift away from the 1895 husband and wife approach is all the more important in light of D.C.Code § 49-202, in effect since 1901, which provides that [w]ords importing the singular number shall be held to include the plural unless unreasonable. As indicated earlier, absent an express limitation in § 16-302 to adoptions by couples who are married, § 49-202 presumptively applies, converting § 16-302 to say that any persons  shall be eligible to adopt except when categorically unreasonable. The legislative history in no way suggests that application of this interpretative presumption here would be unreasonable. In sum, the legislative history of the 1954 Act itself adds very little to our understanding, derived from the language of §§ 16-302, -305, and -312, as to whether an unmarried couple is entitled to adopt. From the perspective of statutory evolution, however, we can see that the legislative history of adoption statutes in this jurisdiction, when coupled with the substantive gloss of § 49-202, points toward inclusive application of the statute to unmarried couples. Because, however, the statutory language and the legislative history (as it pertains to specific provisions of the 1954 Act) are inconclusive, we must consider still other interpretive criteria.
Courts scrutinize statutory language and legislative history with a view to finding out what the legislature actually intended at the time of enactment. Courts also sometimes use canons of statutory construction for that purpose. Aside from her reference to the general principle of strict construction, the trial judge did not employ canons of construction. Because the District of Columbia has joined the appellants' side on appeal, however, we believe it is important to assess, sua sponte, the merits of a particular canon of construction that the proponents of the trial court's ruling undoubtedly would cite.
One way of looking at the trial judge's analysis would be to say she focused exclusively on the language in § 16-302 that contemplates adoption by a married couple (spouse, husband and wife, marital status), and then applied, implicitly, the Latin maxim expressio unius est exclusio alterius: when a legislature makes express mention of one thing, the exclusion of others is implied. McCray v. McGee, 504 A.2d 1128, 1130 (D.C.1986) (statute permitting exception for counterclaims to Small Claims Branch jurisdictional limit understood to preclude exception for unmentioned cross-claims). [28] It is important to recognize, however, that reliance on any particular canon of statutory construction cannot be conclusive; indeed, for every canon, one can find an applicable countercanon. In re Kossow, 393 A.2d 97, 101 (D.C.1978) (citation omitted). In this case, for instance, since Congress did not expressly exclude adoptions by unmarried couples, the trial judge just as easily might have relied on the canon that says: statutory language may fairly be understood to comprehend many different cases when only some are expressly mentioned by way of example. [29] It is important to understand that canons of construction are not rules of substantive law, see Neuberger v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue, 311 U.S. 83, 88, 61 S.Ct. 97, 101, 85 L.Ed. 58 (1940); Matter of Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul & Pacific R.R. Co., 658 F.2d 1149, 1158 (7th Cir. 1981)unless enacted as such, as was D.C.Code § 49-202. See supra note 6 and accompanying text. Nor is any particular canon easily identifiable as a tool of interpretation that assuredly applies to a particular statute. Karl Llewellyn once supplied a list of 28 instances where a proffered canon of construction could be neutralized effectively by another one. [30] In reality, therefore, when a court relies on a particular interpretive maxim such as expressio unius, the court is commonly electing between conflicting shorthand expressions to describe, after the fact, the court's particular rationale for deciding, for an assortment of reasons, what the statute means, having taken into account the statutory language and legislative history, the legislative scheme as a whole (including statutes that should be read together), and statutory purpose. Application of a canon of statutory construction, therefore, is actually a way of summarizingof explaininga decision otherwise made; it is not really a way of reaching a decision. [31] The question, then, is whether expressio unius describes a valid approach to discerning whether Congress in 1954 intended to include unmarried couples among the persons eligible to adopt children. The assumption underlying expressio unius is that, by reference to what the legislature said, the court can tell that the legislature thought about another matter and rejected it. In other words, this canon is shorthand for saying that the legislature said enough to imply it was covering the field, and thus that any omission within that field had to be intentional, not inadvertent. See McCray, 504 A.2d at 1130 (Congress, by failing to mention crossclaims in section 16-3904, must be presumed to have consciously excluded cross-claims from that section.) (emphasis added). This kind of reasoning has been applied in several common situations: when the statute specifies remedies, [32] itemizes exemptions [33] or deductions, [34] or creates exceptions [35]  classic examples of legislative action that, by its very nature, purports to be exclusive and thus clearly suggests the legislature has thought about the particular matter omitted. For three reasons the adoption statute does not present such a situation. First, in considering whether married couples are excluded as adopters, we are not dealing with typical expressio unius categories: specified remedies, exemptions, exceptions. Second, the statutory language itself does not clearly purport to specify all eligible adopters, given its level of generality (especially when compared with the 1895 statute) and its use of ifs when referring to married couples. Finally, and of considerable importance, there is no basis here for inferring that Congress even considered adoption by unmarried couples, let alone took a position on it. Both the statute and legislative history are silent on the subject. Nor is this a case where the legislature, in considering who should be allowed to adopt, necessarily would have considered unmarried couples. It might have done so, but did not assuredly do so. For that reason the very premise of expressio unius that the legislature considered and rejected a proposed possibility, see McCray, 504 A.2d at 1130is missing. See Adoption of Tammy, 619 N.E.2d at 319 (While the Legislature may not have envisioned adoption by same-sex partners, there is no indication that it attempted to define all possible categories of persons leading to adoptions in the best interests of children.) (footnote omitted). We therefore must conclude that the expressio unius rationale cannot be used to explain the omission of unmarried couple adopters from § 16-302, and thus it cannot be applied to justify the exclusion of unmarried couples from eligibility to adopt.
The strict construction approach which the trial judge applied is akin to expressio unius analysis in that it would preclude extension of the statute beyond expressly permitted situations. See supra III. B. But there is a fundamental difference: instead of saying that expression of one thing should be understood as the conscious exclusion of another, strict construction says, the other way around, that legislative failure to express a possibilityincluding failure to erase a common law or other established normshould be understood by itself to exclude that possibility. [36] In this case, strict construction would deny adoptions to unmarried couples simply because adoption as such was impossible at common law and, solely for that reason, should be precluded unless the statute expressly recognizes a particular adoptive relationship. See Scharfeld, 76 U.S.App.D.C. at 379, 133 F.2d at 341. The fact that adoptions have been authorized in the District of Columbia since 1895, see supra note 10, suggests that this particular rationale for strict construction of the 1954 statute is no longer persuasive. But more to the point, as we have noted, many jurisdictions have come to reject strict construction of adoption statutes in recognition of an overriding need to effectuate their beneficial purposes. See supra note 4. This court, at least implicitly, has joined this trend. In In re J.H., 313 A.2d 874 (D.C.1974), in sustaining an adoption (with the mother's consent) by the admitted father of an illegitimate child, we took an inclusive approach based both on the statute's general language permitting any person to adopt and on the statute's paramount concern, namely, the best interests of the child. Id. at 875-76. Rejecting the idea that particular kinds of adoptions are precluded if not expressly recognized, we stressed: It is noteworthy that Section 16-302 does not exclude the father of an illegitimate child from the class permitted to adopt. Id. at 875 (emphasis added). [37] In this jurisdiction, therefore, as in Massachusetts, see Adoption of Tammy, supra note 12, we have recognized that a non-standard, id., family created under the adoption statute can be in a child's best interest. While not directly on point, J.H. at least makes clear that this court has favored a liberal over a strict construction of the adoption statute. We therefore conclude that the strict construction approach, like the expressio unius maxim, does not offer a persuasive reason for precluding adoptions by unmarried couples. Premising statutory interpretation on a pre-1895 state of affairs, without attention to more recent legislative principles, hardly commends itselfat least not to this court. As yet, therefore, we have seen no basis for concluding that it would be unreasonable to interpret § 16-302 in light of § 49-202, as applied to unmarried couples, to say: Any persons may petition the court for a decree of adoption. (emphasis added). We turn to still other interpretive criteria.