Recent changes in New York law have brought about a lot of challenges for everyone affected by adoption. In a nutshell, one of the new laws states that in a New York agency adoption, if there is an agreement between the adoptive family and birth family to stay in contact after the placement of the baby, that is to be legally binding, this agreement must be approved by the court.

FIA’s staff, with the assistance of many professionals, worked together to formulate a flexible template for these agreements – we fondly call them PACAs (post adoption contact agreements). Our biggest challenge was to find language that embraced and recognized the voice of the child until the age of his/her majority. To write that letters and pictures and a once a year visit will occur on an annual basis would seem, on the surface, a pretty manageable agreement. Think of this agreement when the child is a newborn and few people would disagree that this would work. Now fast forward to the child being a twelve year old and you being faced with the “look” of your child informing you that “you can’t make me, no way, no how” is the visit going to occur because states your child emphatically “you can’t tell me what to do and I am going to my best friend’s sleep over and I am not going to any picnic to see my birth mother”. As the parent, you might or might not agree with your child’s assessment of the reason the visit is not in your child’s script but you, as the parent, are legally bound to the agreement that obligates you to the visit. Or take the scenario in reverse – your child’s birth mother and father email you prior to the scheduled annual visit, informing you, that for various personal reasons, they no longer feel able to participate in the annual visit. The visits over the years have worked out very well and you know that your child is going to think that it is his/her fault that the birth parents no longer wish to visit.

I, for many years, was in strong opposition to written post adoption contract agreements. My feeling was that the foundation of all adoptions and relationships had to be that of trust and that the best written document could not create trust. Initially I was resistant to the new law. But having had a few cases over the years where conflicts have occurred between the birth and adoptive families and having witnessed the effects on the children, I have come to see the merits of how well written PACAs will enhance and strengthen the trust between the families and how our children will be the beneficiaries of the hard work of the adults who truly do love their children and whose goals are the same: children who are adopted, growing up to be healthy, well adjusted adults!

Our PACAs now include language that appropriately recognizes the adults’ responsibility — both adoptive and birth parents — to 100% of the time have the child’s best interest at heart, especially when any conflicts arise related to the agreement. And we have included language that addresses the voice of the child over time. It is the agency’s hope that these contracts will withstand the test of time. I hope and expect to hear from our children as to how they think we have advocated for them.

Dawn, Director

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