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View from the Foot of the Tower: Largely illusory – leave to oppose adoption
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It is easy to forget 18 months on that
Re B-S (Adoption: Application of s 47(5)) [2013] EWCA Civ 1146
[2014] 1 FLR 1035 was fundamentally a case dealing with an appeal from a judge’s refusal to grant a mother leave to oppose an adoption application.
Within the judgment the Court of Appeal stressed that in making a provision within the Adoption and Children Act 2002 that a parent could seek leave to oppose an adoption application if their circumstances had changed Parliament had intended this to be a meaningful remedy.
The case law as it had developed prior to
Re B-S was moving away from that and setting the bar at such a level that no parent could in practice hope to clear it. (Reverting in practice back to the old days of the Adoption Act 1976 where parental consent being dispensed with only if the parent was ‘unreasonably withholding’ it but it was virtually...
Read the full article here.
