New Supreme Court judgment about adoption
The Supreme Court today (22 April 2026) handed down their judgment in the appeal. In the matter of X and Y (Children: Adoption Order: Setting Aside) [2026] UKSC 13. The judgment affirms the unique nature of adoption as a permanent and final order which cannot be undone.
The facts of this case are extraordinary – the children X & Y were adopted at the age of 4 & 5 in 2013. They had been through lengthy care proceedings during which they had had frequent contact with their mother. The adopter (AM) continued face-to-face contact at an unusually high level to help the girls settle in their new family. During Covid she invited the the birth mother and her younger children into her home. In 2021 the birth mother had moved out and the relationship between AM and the girls broke down. Orders were made in care proceedings for X to live with her birth father and Y to live with her birth mother, with the birth parents being granted parental responsibility. In 2023 the adoptive mother applied to the High Court for an order to achieve the girls’ wishes to be ‘unadopted’.
The birth family and the children all supported the initial application, although one of the girls was less committed than the other and her final position was to acknowledge the stability and security that the adoption had given her. However, the facts of the case were not particularly relevant to the court’s decision, as the issue was whether or not the court had the power to undo, or revoke, the adoption order. None of the Adoption Acts, from 1926 to 2002 has included a mechanism for the revocation of a properly made adoption order, except for in one circumstance. Where a birth parent has adopted their own child as a single parent to avoid the child being classed as illegitimate, but later marries the other birth parent, the court may revoke the adoption. It is not clear whether this provision has ever been used.
Where a child needs protection and there is no statutory provision which would help, the High Court can make orders under the ‘inherent jurisdiction’, an ancient power of the Crown to protect children. One of the areas in which it is often used today is to make decisions about controversial or end of life medical treatment. In this case AM applied to revoke the adoption under the inherent jurisdiction on the basis that the children’s welfare required revocation and that there was no other legal structure which would allow it.
The inherent jurisdiction cannot be used where Parliament has passed an Act governing an issue. In respect of adoption, Parliament has passed an Act which provides that an adopted person is to be treated as if they had been born to their adopter. It removes the birth parents’ parental responsibility and makes the adopters the parents of the child throughout their life. An adoption order is a unique order in that it is final and permanent.
CoramBAAF were joined as intervenors in the Supreme Court and made submissions on behalf of our member agencies. We set out the importance of adoption as a permanence option for children, with a low disruption rate, and described the concerns that allowing adoption orders to be revoked could potentially have a chilling effect on the recruitment of adopters who were looking to create a permanent family.
The Supreme Court held that because the Adoption and Children Act deals with adoption and sets out the status of an adopted person, there is no scope for the use of the inherent jurisdiction. If an adopted child needs protection, all of the usual child protection provisions are available as they would be for a child living with their birth parents. The Court also pointed out that if an adoption breaks down and a child returns to their birth parent, the birth parent could apply to adopt the child and the court would be able to consider the child’s welfare and make a new adoption order to recreate a legal relationship between parent and child.
The Court considered other cases where adoptions had been revoked, and distinguished those where there had been some procedural irregularity or unfairness in the making of the order from those where the adoption had simply not been successful. Where there had been an irregularity the adoption order could be appealed, but if an order had been properly made, there was no provision which allowed it to be revoked. The few High Court cases where a revocation had been allowed were based on a misunderstanding of the inherent jurisdiction.