Adoption through court. Step-by-step instructions

Russian legislators are very sensitive to young citizens. Thus , children left without parents are looked after from all sides: to protect their rights, special bodies are created that work in accordance with relevant laws . At the same time, the state is interested in ensuring that every child has a family. For this purpose, adoption and guardianship procedures have been developed and are successfully applied.

Adoption through the court is a special procedure where only a judge decides whether the baby can be transferred to a specific person . If the terms of the laws are not violated, the court always decides the case in favor of the family.

First stage

According to the norm of Article 125 of the Family Code, adoption cases are conducted in a special manner by federal judges . The following must be involved in the process:

adoptive parent;
guardianship representative;
prosecutor;
the child himself, if he is over 14 years old.

Before going to court, the candidacy of the adoptive parent is carefully checked , and if one of the conditions that prevents adoption is revealed (actually confirmed), then even the judge will not take responsibility for transferring the child to the applicant. Thus, the court, at the request of the guardianship council, will refuse adoption if it turns out that the applicant has a criminal record, was previously deprived of guardianship, or is seriously ill.

In addition, before the trial, all issues with the guardianship council must be resolved:

register as a potential adoptive parent;
undergo special training (if necessary);
fill out all the necessary papers;
finally decide on the choice of the baby.

However, consent to adoption must be obtained:

wife or husband for adoption;
the baby himself, if he is over 10 years old;
parents who are not deprived of their rights;
guardianship authority (in the form of a conclusion).

If there are no complaints from the guardianship, then the court will consider the adoption according to special rules. But first you need to determine which court to go to. In Article 269 of the Code of Civil Procedure there is a rule according to which you need to declare:

Which court should I go to?

to a city or district court, if the adoptive parent is a citizen of the Russian Federation;
in the regional, regional or republican, if the adoptive parent is a foreigner or lives abroad.

In this case, the court is geographically located at the child’s place of residence. The special procedure for considering such cases is that the meetings are held closed, without outsiders.

Legal consequences

As soon as the court decision gains legal force, family ties between the adoptive parents and the minor are terminated and legal relations between blood-related parents and their child are resumed. The adoptive parent is deprived of his responsibilities, and at the same time his rights, benefits, and privileges.

Cancellation threatens the child with the following consequences:

returning to an orphanage or boarding school;
transfer to relatives, father or mother;
change of surname and patronymic.

The minor will be assigned to where it will be better for him, taking into account the opinion of the specialists of the PLO (Article 143 of the RF IC) and the minor himself, if he is already 10 years old.

Expert opinion

Maria Lokshina

Family law expert since 2010

To maintain the previous level of financial support, especially if the cancellation of adoption was due to the fault of adults, the former adoptive parent may be required to pay alimony to the child.

Application to court for adoption of a child

The basis for any judicial action is a statement . Chapter 29

The Code of Civil Procedure is entirely devoted to the adoption procedure. Among other things, there are explanations about what an application to the court for adoption should contain and what documents the judge should see.

So, as required by Article 270 of the Code, the application must indicate:

Full name of the adoptive parent;
place of residence and registration;
Contact phone numbers;
Full name and birthday of the child;
address of his place of residence;
information about whether there are parents, brothers, sisters;
circumstances under which the child is adopted (documented);
request to change the baby’s personal data (first name, patronymic, last name, date and place of birth, records of parents).

The circumstances of adoption are the reasons why a child should be placed with a family. For example, a stepfather adopts his wife’s child from his first marriage, provided that he does not communicate with the father (if the father is not an alcoholic, meets with the child, provides for him, then his consent to the adoption will be required).

If a baby is adopted by strangers, you need to prove that he will be better off at home than in a special institution: he will receive more attention, better living conditions, and he will have parents.

Important The state fee for adoption is not paid , since such cases concern only the interests of the child. The basis is paragraph 14 of Article 333.36 of the Tax Code.

According to the norm of Article 271 of the Code of Civil Procedure, documents must be attached to the application:

a copy of the applicant's birth certificate (if he is not married);
a copy of the marriage certificate;
consent of the husband (wife) to adoption (or evidence that the relationship is actually terminated);
medical report on the applicant’s health status;
a certificate from work about the salary for the year and about the position (or declarations certified by the tax authorities);
documents for housing (social tenancy agreement, warrant, certificate of title or extract from the Unified State Register);
a certificate from the guardianship council stating that the applicant is included in the register of potential guardians;
certificate of completion of special training;
a certificate from the consulate or representative office about the living conditions of the adoptive parent (if the applicant is a citizen of the Russian Federation living abroad).

Important All documents are provided in two copies, and the originals will need to be brought to the hearing, where the judge will certify copies from them .

Sample application to the court for the adoption of a child.

Common mistakes adopted by adoptive parents

Common mistakes adoptive parents make when applying for adoption.

Adoption is perhaps the only category of court cases, the decision on which is met (hopefully) with smiles from everyone present. Of course, what could be more joyful? A baby, or even two, found a family, and the parents found a son or daughter. But the path from the moment when a married couple or a single adoptive parent decides to accept a child into the family, to the moment when the judge pronounces an almost sacred “application to grant,” sometimes takes several months, and is far from covered with roses.

This article discusses only adoption by Russian citizens on the territory of the Russian Federation, and only the narrow issue of preparing and filing an application for adoption in court. It does not examine the issues of drawing up an application, but only lists the main mistakes that adoptive parents make when preparing and submitting applications. The author is grateful to all his trustees for the experience on which this article is based.

Adoption is established by the court according to the rules of special proceedings established by the Civil Procedure Code of the Russian Federation. As a general rule, cases of this category are considered by the district court at the place of residence or location of the child.

In practice, courts may return adoption applications if it is not possible to determine from them the child’s place of residence or where he is located. Adoptive parents simply omit this point.

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The child’s place of residence will be either the place of his registration at the place of residence (the most rare place for consideration of this category of cases), or the place of residence of his guardian (in accordance with Article 20 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation - this very place will be the place of residence of the child under guardianship), or a place where the child is supervised in an organization for children left without parental care or for other reasons.

The law does not establish any criteria for determining the location of a child. Thus, theoretically, it would be correct to file an adoption application with the court at the child’s location: in a hospital, or in a shelter, and even, for example, in a summer health camp. However, the adoptive parent will be faced with the need to somehow prove to the court that this is the right place. And this is where problems can arise.

Therefore, the location of the child should be understood as the place of his temporary stay, which you can prove with documentation. For example, it could be a social shelter, where the child is staying temporarily, but there is documentary evidence of this.

It would be a mistake to submit an application for adoption at the location of any organization where the child was previously kept if the child was placed under guardianship. In this case, the application should be submitted to the district court at the place of residence of the guardian.

It is also necessary to note that the application is submitted to the district court at the location of the child at the time of filing such an application. Even if during the judicial procedure the child, for example, is placed under guardianship or transferred to another institution, this will not lead to a change in the jurisdiction of the case (Article 33 of the Code of Civil Procedure of the Russian Federation).

The second large group of problems is related to the content of the application for adoption of a child. The list of what must be indicated in the application for adoption is established by Art. 270 of the Code of Civil Procedure of the Russian Federation, however, often, applicants do not fully comply with the requirements of this article.

First of all, we are talking about incompletely formulated requirements for the court. The court does not have the right to arbitrarily go beyond the stated requirements and “figure out” for the adoptive parent what else he had in mind when filing an application with the court. Thus, applicants quite often forget to indicate a request to change the child’s name, surname or patronymic , or his place of birth . If in the case of a surname, first name or patronymic this can be somehow corrected in the future (through a long and bureaucratic procedure for changing the name), then the place of birth can only be changed by the court, and only when making a decision on the establishment.

The second most common mistake made by potential adoptive parents is failure to indicate the need to record the adoptive parents as parents in the child’s birth certificate. The point is that this is not a “self-evident” requirement. On the contrary, the Family Code requires that information about parents be preserved unless such a request is made by the adoptive parents (Article 136 of the RF IC).

In addition, there are non-obvious requirements for the content of the application that are not directly specified in the Civil Procedure Code, but exist due to the requirements of other laws. Thus, in accordance with the requirements of the Federal Law “On Acts of Civil Status”, a court decision, according to which changes are made or a new civil record is drawn up, must contain the information necessary to make such a record. To draw up an adoption record, it is required that the court decision on adoption indicate the details (date, number, place of compilation, surname, first name, patronymic of the child) of the birth record, and also, if you want to be entered as parents in the birth certificate of the child being adopted, information about the adoptive parents (last name, first name, patronymic, citizenship, place of residence). Situations often arise when the place of residence of the parents is not indicated in the court decision, and this raises questions for the registry office when drawing up the adoption record. Therefore, we can recommend that adoptive parents, when formulating a request to register them as parents, indicate the place of residence of the adoptive parents directly in the petition part of the application.

In accordance with Art. 131 of the Code of Civil Procedure of the Russian Federation, the application must be signed by the applicant or another person by proxy, however, alas, it often happens that applicants forget to sign the application before submitting it to the court.

The list of documents attached to the application for establishment of adoption is also established by law (Article 271 of the Code of Civil Procedure). Unfortunately, it is formulated quite difficult to understand, and raises a number of questions when applying it. Perhaps in connection with this, the Supreme Court (see Review of Practice in Adoption Cases for 2014, for example) has repeatedly noted that failure to provide all legally required documents is the most common shortcoming of adoption applications.

As the author’s practice shows, the greatest problems are caused by providing a document on housing, as well as a document on registration as an adoptive parent.

The application for adoption must be accompanied by a document confirming the right to use or ownership of the residential premises. There are usually no problems with the document of ownership; a copy of the certificate of ownership of the residential premises is attached. The right to use is more complicated.

First of all, this does not mean any premises, but the one in which the adoptive parents live and where (at least immediately after the court decision) the child will live. Further, it is necessary to keep in mind that the right to use housing can arise for various reasons, and a document about this is needed. If you live somewhere due to “family relations” or because “good people let you in,” you need to document this, for example, with an agreement on the right to use your parents’ apartment, and submit a document on the right of use to the court .

In itself, an extract from the house register, or a financial-personal account (or, issued in Moscow in exchange for these documents, the so-called “Unified Housing Document” - EZhD) is not, strictly speaking, a document of title, but to the courts as confirmation of the right to use accepted.

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Adoptive parents also do not always provide a copy of the marriage certificate, but, due to the requirements of Art. 271 of the Code of Civil Procedure of the Russian Federation is mandatory.

Certificates of employment, as a rule, do not cause problems when received and submitted to the court, however, there are situations when they do not contain all the information required by law: they forget to indicate either the position or the average salary. Average wage is a labor law term and means the average monthly amount based on the employee’s annual earnings. Indicating only the amount of wages or its monthly payments is not, strictly speaking, fulfillment of the requirements established for this document. As well as the 2-NDFL certificate, which is sometimes requested by the courts, and which, as proof of income, is usually enthusiastically accepted by the guardianship and trusteeship authorities.

Separately, paragraph 7 of part 1 of Art. requires clarification. 271 Code of Civil Procedure of the Russian Federation. A document on registration as a candidate adoptive parent is not issued as a separate document to adoptive parents who are citizens of the Russian Federation; such a document is provided for foreign adoptive parents. However, Russian adoptive parents have a document confirming such registration. This is a conclusion on the possibility of being an adoptive parent , issued in accordance with Government Decree No. 275 dated March 29, 2000, regulating adoption issues, as well as a referral to visit a child, issued to visit a child being adopted. In accordance with the law, on the basis of the conclusion about the possibility of being an adoptive parent, he was obligated to be registered as a candidate for adoptive parent with the guardianship and trusteeship authority that issued the said conclusion. A referral to visit a child is issued only after the citizen is registered as a candidate for adoptive parents. As a rule, the adoptive parent has both of these documents and can be attached to the application.

Many questions arise when preparing a package of documents for filing with the court. On the one hand, in Art. 271 of the Code of Civil Procedure of the Russian Federation quite unequivocally establishes that all documents are submitted in two copies. On the other hand, the court makes a decision based on evidence, which can be documents or duly certified copies. In addition, due to the general rules of legal proceedings, all documents are provided with copies according to the number of persons participating in the case.

The practice developed as follows. Firstly, the courts accept copies of documents, both certified (in our case, either by a notary, or by the body that issued them, or by the body that has the originals of these documents) and not certified. In the latter case, the court, as a rule, as part of a preliminary court hearing, must be provided with original documents for comparison with copies and their certification (copies for the case materials are certified by the court itself). Separately, we note that there is no need to keep copies of, for example, a medical certificate, a certificate of employment and other “one-time” or easily restored documents - give the originals to the court.

Secondly, it is required to submit an application and attached documents to the court according to the number of persons involved. In an adoption case, at least the adoptive parents themselves are involved (not keeping copies of the documents, but giving everything to the court is a very “popular” action among adoptive parents who are worried about the process), the court, the prosecutor, and the guardianship authority. In total, you need to submit to the court, at a minimum, the application itself with documents or copies, and two more copies of this application and documents. And if a child is adopted from any institution, then a copy for this participant in the case. Thus, the entire package of documents must be at least four copies (one of them must be kept for yourself).

Since the author did not set out to provide an overview of all possible shortcomings of the application that lead to the suspension of the case, but limited himself to only the most common ones, the topic, of course, will not be abandoned in the future.

I really hope that there will be fewer mistakes now and the children will end up at home a little faster.

Anton Zharov, lawyer, specialist in family and juvenile law, head of the “Team of Lawyer Zharov”

How is the meeting going?

Since the proceedings are special, outsiders are not allowed into the hearing, and information about the participants in the case does not appear anywhere. For example, if you go to the website of any court, in the “casework” tab you can find all the data about the case by the last name of the applicant or defendant: who is considering it, the stages of consideration, the names of all participants.

Here, no names are disclosed, since both the judge and the entire judicial apparatus are subject to the requirement to maintain the secrecy of adoption .

Once the application is recorded in the clerk's office and submitted to the judge, preparations are made. During this process, the judge requests an opinion from the guardianship on the possibility of adoption. It must be accompanied by:

an inspection report of the housing in which the child will live;
baby's birth certificate;
medical certificate about his health;
the child’s consent to adoption and change of his personal data (if required and only for a child over 10 years old);
consent of minor parents.

If no additional requests are required, then the trial will end at the second meeting (the first meeting is a conversation where the opinions of the parties are clarified). According to general rules, the judge has 2 months to make a decision on the case .

For reference. During the process, the judge will evaluate all the evidence, study the documents, ask the opinion of the guardianship authority and the prosecutor, and listen to the applicant. The decision is made personally by the judge: he may not even accept the point of view of the guardianship council, but he will listen to the opinion of the prosecutor .

If the documents contain minor discrepancies with the law, for example, the applicant has not undergone special training, then the judge may allow adoption if there is no danger to the health and upbringing of the baby. In this case, the applicant must prove that he knows how to raise children, for example, he can submit to the court :

birth certificates of other children being raised by the applicant;
their characteristics (positive) from their place of residence, school, kindergarten.

The whole essence of the consideration of the case comes down to proving to the court (and confirming this with documents) the following circumstances:

the applicant will be a good parent;
the child in the family will be provided for (fed, clothed, shod);
the child has a place to live.

Based on the case materials, the judge will make a decision (the minutes of the meetings, where the testimony of the parties is recorded - also case materials).

What is it for

It is important to understand that disclosing the secret of adoption is fraught with the development of a negative atmosphere in the family, which can lead to divorce of spouses, cancellation of adoption or unlawful actions on the part of members of the family union. . Contrary to the Conventions on the Rights of Children, which opposes concealing the fact of adoption, as this is contrary to human rights

Contrary to the Conventions on the Rights of Children, which opposes concealing the fact of adoption, as this is contrary to human rights.

The secrecy of adoption can entail moral and legal problems, therefore in Russia a decision has been made on its non-disclosure in order to neutralize the threat of these problems arising.

The following procedures are also kept secret:

protection from attempts to take the baby away from the foster family by his blood relatives;
ensuring a comfortable climate in the family, relationships based on mutual understanding and love;
protection from mental and moral ill-health of children in foster families, since often the news of the absence of family ties among family members can cause irreparable damage to the mental health of the child;
protection from blackmail from third parties who exert pressure under the pretext of disclosing secrets;
responsibility for disclosing the secret of adoption provides protection from the provision of information about the adoptive parents to the child’s biological parents, who “in time” came to their senses about their involvement in raising the child.

Modern trends in glasnost give the right to assume that, following the example of the West, the secrecy of adoption and the threat of its disclosure will soon be abolished in Russia. This measure will eliminate all obstacles to finding blood relatives if necessary.

Adoption through court. The court's decision

At the end of the hearing, the judge will announce his decision. According to the norms of the Civil Procedure Code, first

the summary part is announced, that is, the result itself. The final decision is prepared within 5 days. And it will come into force only in a month, if there is no appeal .

What the judge can decide:

satisfy the application in full;
satisfy only part of the requirements (for example, he may not allow changing the day or place of birth of the baby);
refuse the applicant.

If there was a refusal, and the applicant believes that all the documents were presented and the decision is illegal, then a maximum of 10 days after the final version of the decision is drawn up, an appeal can be filed (a complaint against the decision to a higher court).

Advice Courts of appeal overturn decisions very rarely, and then only on grounds of improper conduct of the process. Therefore, if there is a refusal, it is better to study the judge’s motives, correct the mistakes and re-initiate the adoption through the court .

What responsibilities are provided?

Criminal liability for disclosing information about adoption occurs after the disclosure has taken place. This crime belongs to the category of completed crimes and cannot be either ongoing or continued.

The Criminal Code of the Russian Federation establishes both primary and additional punishment for this category of case. The main ones include:

penalties not exceeding 80 thousand rubles (can be replaced by the amount of salary for the last six months);
compulsory work – no more than 15 days;
correctional labor – no more than 12 months;
arrest – no more than 4 months.

Additional penalties include a ban on holding positions or conducting certain activities for a period of no more than 3 years. Since the sanction of the article does not contain a punishment in the form of imprisonment, the imposition of an additional punishment in terms of the term coincides with the main one.

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Adoption, judicial practice

The practice of transferring children to adoptive parents is clear: if there is no obvious threat to the health and life of the child, there is confidence that the adopted child will receive everything he needs in the family, judges resolve the case positively.

Example. in 2021, the Arzamas court allowed a 20-year-old sister to adopt her 14-year-old brother , whose parents died, despite the fact that the age difference between them is only 6 years (according to the law, the difference is at least 16 years, but the court can decide the case according to -your own). At the same time, the sister did not undergo any training and does not have her own children or her own home. But there is a grandmother’s apartment where they are registered.

Adoption is prohibited only in cases of obvious violation of laws, for example, in the following circumstances:

it is found out that the adoptive parent or spouse is convicted under a serious crime;
the child's parent is against adoption (provided that he cares about him);
one of the relatives is adopted (the brother is adopted, but the sister is not);
housing does not meet standards (dilapidated building, too small area);
the application was drawn up contrary to the requirements of the Civil Procedure Code.

Example. The Ulyanovsk Regional Court rejected the applicant on only one basis: the application did not indicate the motives for adoption . Meanwhile, you need to prove that the child needs a family, he will be better off there than in an orphanage. These little things are sometimes an obstacle to adoption, but not a reason to forget about the desire to become a parent.