The UK Supreme Court to consider whether adoption orders can be set-aside on the basis of welfare grounds

The UK Supreme Court will sit today (Wednesday 4 February) to hear the case of X and Y (Children: Adoption Order: Setting Aside) UKSC/2025/0039.

The issue central to this case is whether an adoption order can be set-aside on the basis of welfare grounds. The Court of Appeal considered this point in November 2024 and concluded that it could not.

The Court of Appeal held that: “Adoption orders are transformative, have a peculiar finality and are intended to be irreversible, lasting throughout life, as if the child had been born to the adopter. That high degree of permanence, from which the benefits to the child of long-term security and stability should flow, is the unique feature that marks adoption out from all other orders made for children; it is, at its core, what adoption is all about. We agree with the SoS that it would gravely damage the lifelong commitment of adopters to their adoptive children if there were a possibility of the finality of the adoption order being challenged on welfare grounds.” The Court of Appeal also commented that “in cases that do not involve adoption, there is no legal mechanism by which natural parents or children can extinguish the parental bond between them, however much they may wish to do so.” An adoption order is to act in the same way.

The facts of this particular case are very sad. The case involves two children, X and Y.

In August 2012, X and Y were placed for adoption with AM. Prior to which they had spent time in foster care, but had significant contact with their birth mother, BM. X and Y did not settle with AM, and they continued to spend large periods of time with BM, including a period when BM came to live with X, Y and AM to enable BM to escape an abusive relationship.

The children left AM’s home in August 2021, subsequently moving to live with BM. In May 2022, X then moved to live with her birth father, having been introduced to him. The local authority issued care proceedings in February 2023.

In April 2023, AM made an application for the adoption orders to be revoked. It is that application that is the subject of consideration and appeal.

Both X and Y are now understood to be living with BM. The children’s position at first instance appeared to be that they supported the application for them to be ‘unadopted’.

We wait to see whether the Supreme Court will uphold the Court of Appeal’s decision.