Category Archives: Provisional Adoption Order

Fake ID? or Genuine Name change?

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Since discovering that my adoption was not valid I have lived with the concern that the name that I have grown up with is or could be considered to be ‘fake’. In this day and age, having a fake ID can lead to all kinds of problems and difficulties, so this is a genuine concern. A concern that goes beyond me to my wife – who had her surname changed and also my children – who also bear a potentially fake surname. In fact I have been advised, by well meaning people, to draw as little attention to my ‘almost adopted’ status as possible for that very reason. For me, regardless of whether I ignore it or not the facts remain, just like a disease it is present whether you acknowledge it or not, and eventually you will have to deal with it.

The problem is this, the Provisional Adoption Order was issued in the UK but is not considered to be valid outside of the UK. The Provisional Adoption Order was only a provisional step in the adoption process, therefore it could be considered that the name change was provisional to be finalised when the adoption order was granted in the country of the adopters. As this never happened in my case, does this mean that my name is fake? As I live outside of the UK and have had to verify my name with various officials though birth-certificates, passports etc. could I not therefore be considered to be using a fake ID as I was never legally adopted in any country?

I have found the answer to the problem of name, but from a Lawyer specialising in Family Law, they unfortunately know almost nothing about the Provisional Adoption Order, but from someone working in the British Foreign Office. The following is my summary of a lengthy conversation with them:

In the eyes of the British Government the identity and name of their citizens is fixed when a UK passport is issued. The facts given in the application process are checked and verified by the government department that issues passports. Once the issuing department is satisfied the passport is issued and in the eyes of the British Government the details on the passport is who you are. Any question of the validity of the details in the passport are answered by the issuing department. As parentage is not mentioned on your passport, it does not matter if the people mentioned on your birth certificate are your parents or not. You stand as an individual, separate from them, in your own right.

Which in my case means I have no legal parents given that my birth parents surrendered their rights as my legal parents and my intended adopters, by not completing the adoption process, did not become my legal parents. The name that I carry, the surname that my wife and children now carry is one that was issued to me by a miscarriage of justice but which is nevertheless verified by the British Government and is therefore a legal ID. I stand alone as the founder of my surname, with no parents or official family tree. Thanks to the stubborn non-action of my intended adopters whose decision was definitely more about their interests than my welfare, I have no past but thankfully I have the ability to shape the future of my family with a government backed ID.

If you have discovered that you are named in a Provisional Adoption Order, rest assured that if you have a passport issued by the British Government, the name given to you on those pages is yours and that it is a valid government backed document.

The Year behind & the year ahead

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It is now a year since I discovered the existence of the Provisional Adoption Order and  my status of being provisionally adopted.  During this year I have learned many things but the two that have stood out for me are that:

  • the laws of any country are not always fair or just or even for that matter well-considered.  This is possibly because they are often a reflection of discussions that have been held in a specific society and are in the process of development and not in a fully developed stage, the Provisional Adoption Order is a proof of point.  In 1958 the UK Government introduced the PAO to answer a perceived need among a specific group of people.  In 1976 following a full review the UK Government recognised that the Provisional Adoption Order was not meeting the needs of the intended individuals but instead benefitted those who either did not understand the legislation or who chose to disregard them.  As a result its name changed and the rules modified and strengthened.
  • when you go through a period of discovery you inevitably go through a process of personal growth.  You experience grief and maybe anger for what was, elation for new insights and finally peace with yourself as you come to terms with who you are.  While we might not choose these circumstances, how we face and deal with these challenges makes us who we are.  As you go through this process surprisingly you will change and there will be those around you who will struggle with the ‘changing you’ as a result.  That is their problem, you are ultimately responsible only for you and the choices you make in your life, just as they are for theirs.  At the end of the day if they really care about you they will come to terms with the ‘changing you’, if not, they are more interested in the version of you that suited them and their needs and not in the real you.

 One book that has been particularly helpful to me in this process has been “Secrets and Lies: Surviving the Truths that change our lives” by Jane Isay.  I cannot recommend it highly enough.

In the year ahead I hope to answer more questions about the reality of the Provisional Adoption Order and the impact it has one the lives of those who have one.  Stay posted.

What is a Provisional Adoption Order?

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The Provisional Adoption Order was a legal loop-hole introduced into adoption legislation by the Conservative government led by Harold Macmillan.  Under British law only British citizens domiciled in Great Britain could adopt British children.  The Adoption Act 1958 did not change this but allowed for non-domiciled individuals to gain permission to legally remove a British child from Britain for the purpose of adoption under a different legal system.

Permission was necessary as a means of controlling the situation and was laid out in the Act

Section 52

(1) Except under the authority of an order under section fifty-three of this Act (Provisional Adoption Order), it shall not be lawful for any person to take or send an infant who is a British subject out of Great Britain to any place outside of the British Islands with a view to the adoption of the infant (whether in law or in fact) by any person not being a parent or guardian or relative of the infant; and any person who takes or sends an infant out of Great Britain to any place in contravention of this subsection, or makes or takes part in any arrangements for transferring the care and possession of an infant to any other person for that purpose, shall be liable on summary conviction to imprisonment for a term not exceeding six months or to a fine not exceeding one hundred pounds or both.

While the application process was similar to that of adoption, two things were different.  1) the length of time required for the observation of the family by social services was six months rather than three and 2) the adopters were required to provide documentary evidence that they were eligible to adopt in the country they proposed to adopt in.  Once the court was satisfied, a Provisional Adoption Order giving permission to remove the child from the UK was granted.

The name is confusing because it contains the word adoption which signifies to anyone hearing the word, permanence and security.  The word should have been transport, a Provisional Transport Order as all the order does is give permission to transport a child out of the UK anywhere, without any checks or safeguards, the very thing that the word adoption promised.  In 1976, the Provisional Adoption Order together with the Adoption Act 1958 was repealed.

How do I discover if I am Provisionally Adopted?

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To discover if you are affected by a Provisional Adoption Order issued in the UK is quite easy.  It is a two step process and requires that you have access to your UK Birth Certificate.

1) Your first step is to look at the long version of your birth certificate issued by the General Register Office.  There are two versions of your birth certificate, a long version (complete information) and a short version (contains your name, gender and place of birth).  It is only the long one that will give you the necessary information.  On a birth certificate for someone adopted, column (6) contains the the date of the adoption order and description of the court by which it was made.  My column (6) contains the words:

Provisional Adoption Order, Second October 1969, Sheffield County Court

If you find similar wording it means that you too are provisionally adopted.

2) Your next step after confirming that you are provisionally adopted is to look for further information of an adoption.  This would take the shape of an adoption form issued in the country that your adopting parents come from.  You should also have other identifying papers or a social security number issued by the same country as the adoption happened in.  So for example I would have been issued with a social security number from the USA if I had been legally adopted there.  If you cannot find any of these papers then you will need to ask your adopting parents for them, this can of course be tricky.  At this point if you have found these papers or your parents have given them to you, everything is fine and you will have been legally adopted.

If on the other hand you have not been able to locate these papers yourself and your adopting parents do not have them then you will need ask them for the details of your legal adoption.  Once you have the details you will need to approach the authorities and ask them to do a search for your adoption papers.  In my search I have found the authorities to be sympathetic and helpful in this.  If at this point your papers are discovered, read through them to verify that everything is correct and rest assured that you were legally adopted.

If you, like I did, discover at this point that there never was an adoption in any country, you have entered into a profoundly strange and difficult place.  The first thing you must do is seek legal help to sort this mess out.  I wish that I could give clear guidelines but currently there are none.  The second thing you are going to need is an adoption counsellor to help you realign your life as there are some major adjustments ahead.  I wish I could say that everything will be sorted and go back to normal, but unfortunately the fact that you were not legally adopted ensures that it cannot return to normal even if and when everything else is sorted.

Thoughts about my search

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“The reasons for searching are to learn, to make informed decisions, to evaluate applications of knowledge, to find truth”… Mona McCormick

I have spent a lot of time searching for information about the Provisional Adoption Order.  At times it is has felt as if there are too many questions and that for every question answered there are ten questions that have only just been discovered.  Yet the experience of searching has been all encompassing, driven as it is for personal and emotional reasons.  The search almost threatens to take over and become the reason for searching.  So reminding oneself  that the actual goal is not only to have the information but once you have it, to do something with it.

“Certain kinds of information will become obsolete, and knowing how to think has become as important as knowing what to think.”  Sonia Bodi.

During a search you have to scan every scrap of information that you come across to find what might be a clue.  But not every lead is a good lead and just because you have found something does not mean that you should keep hold of it or use it.  The acquiring of information is a skill but it does not make us wise; wisdom is taking information and applying it, knowing how to use it appropriately in the correct setting for the desired result.  So as I scan the various bits of information I have to choose what to use and what to ignore and for that I must have a filter, and this is something that has changed as I have discovered more.

As I have searched I have made the shocking (to me anyway) discovery that there is actually very little real information saved anywhere for someone who has been Provisionally Adopted.  This came to light during a recent conversation with an archivist who told me that while there was a legal obligation for the courts to store adoption records it was different with Provisional Adoption Orders.  More often than not the applicants (those seeking a Provisional Adoption Order) were handed the complete and only court record and that virtually nothing was kept in the court archive.  There would have been exceptions, but as there was no legal reason for the courts to follow up the applicants beyond issuing them with a Provisional Adoption Order.  The reality was why waste time when there was nothing that the court could do if it was discovered that no adoption had taken place.

With that in mind and as I wait for an answer from the final archive to arrive, I have slowly come to the realisation that maybe I have been approaching this the wrong way.  I have been involved in wide sweeping searches for any information relating to my Provisional Adoption.  The results have been depressing, not only is there no evidence that there ever was any attempt at adoption, but the strong probability is that apart from the records that I hold there is no other evidence to support the existence of a Provisional Adoption either.  This leaves me in a totally different place and one where I am unsure what to do next.  I have answered my initial question but found that I now have a totally different ball park to work in and one that I am not sure that I like very much.

So a word of advice to anyone who is adopting – make sure that you get legal assistance and that you double or triple check that you have done everything possible to ensure that the adoption is done correctly.  Don’t leave anything to chance or wishful thinking!

 

Clause 24.

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During the Commons sitting on the 25th July 1958 the matter of Clause 24 of the Children Bill was raised.  This might seem quite cryptic and obscure but in the history of the Provisional Adoption Order it is quite interesting.  It started with Mr. Deputy-Speaker (Sir Charles MacAndrew) saying:

I suggest that all the Amendments to Clause 24, except those in page 14, lines 39 and 40, in the name of the hon. Member for Widnes (Mr. MacColl), might be taken together. The other two may be taken separately. If Divisions are wanted, Mr. Speaker will be quite happy for Divisions to take place.

The debate that followed demonstrated that while the idea of providing for those not permanently resident in the UK to adopt, the mechanism was recognized as being problematical.  Before 1958 it was not possible by law for a non-domiciled person in the UK to adopt a child with UK citizenship.  This of course caused problems for British citizens living in far flung parts of the British Empire who wanted to adopt from the UK.  In order to address this problem Clause 24 was introduced, but was soon seen to be a problem in certain quarters.  The main concern was that the vehicle to be used was called a ‘Provisional Adoption Order’.  This Order gave the persons applying to adopt permission to remove a UK child to another country where there may or may not have been adequate law in place to ensure the safety of the child.  While a child adopted in the UK would be protected by the UK legal system, a child for whom a Provisional Adoption Order had been issued, the UK legal system no longer had any control.  In fact in a recent conversation with a court archivist, I was told that the chances of discovering the court records of a adoption was quite high while the changes of finding any records relating to a Provisional Adoption Order was quite low.  The reason for this was quite simple, the papers were more often than not just handed to those applying for the Provisional Adoption Order and usually no copies were kept by the court.

The end of the discussion that July is quite telling, a Mr Lipton in answer to the then Secretary of State for the Home Department and Lord Privy Seal was:

The public were in no way prepared by the contents of this Report for the conclusions to which the Government suddenly came as a result of which it will now be possible, as an hon. Member opposite said, to have export licensing of children provided for by the law of the land for the first time.

I am sure the Government must agree with this point. In Clause 24 we are taking a gamble. The Under-Secretary knows that she is taking a gamble. It has been made clear by Government spokesmen that there were risks involved in this Clause, which the Government thought on balance ought to be taken. I do not mind taking risks at my own expense, but I object to taking risks and gambling with the lives of children. In retrospect I am sure the Government will agree that they have taken a very serious responsibility upon themselves. I do not think this Third Reading ought to be allowed to proceed without some reference being made to this fact.

The Government are taking a gamble on the future of these children and, what is worse, we shall never know whether this gamble has come off. Even if we did get to know, no one would be able to do anything about it. Goodness knows what tragedy may occur as a result of this, of which we shall never know, but the Government will say, “The Act is working very smoothly. No evidence has been brought to our notice that any child who has been allowed to go abroad is not as happy as any other child in this country.” I know that the rest of the Bill makes many useful and desirable provisions, but from my point of view this Bill will always be tainted by the inclusion in it of the Clause which enables child to be exported abroad.

What I have discovered in my search is that this gamble did not “come off”.  While for many it might have resulted in a happy existence, the undeniable problem is that no matter how happy they might have been, the reality is that if they were not legally adopted by those who applied and received a Provisional Adoption Order, they are officially ‘nobody’.  We are people hanging in limbo, holding on to an identity given to us by people who legally did not have the right to give us a new name, but at the same time not permitted to use the original identity given to us by our birthparents because we were Provisionally Adopted in the eyes of the UK government.

How long does a Provisional Adoption Order last?

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In a recent telephone conversation with the General Records Office (GRO) I was told very clearly that the solution to my situation was to approach the authorities in the country that I was living in.  All that needed to happen was to convince the authorities to ‘formalise’ the Provisional Adoption Order (PAO) that had merely lain dormant since it had been issued.  This was the advice that the GRO expert had to give me and it seems to be very sensible and reasonable as well.

Having read that the PAO might in actual fact have a short legal lifespan I asked if this was actually true.  The answer was emphatic, once a PAO is given by the County Court they are active until they are formalised. This would of course be a fantastic option, but it is not quite true.

In my initial writing of this post in April 2014, I had read the article published in the ‘The Modern Law Review‘ Sept. 1959, Volume 22, Issue 5, on page 503.  In it the statement was made that As before the Act was passed, interim orders may be made for a maximum of two years, but now where the original interim order is for a lesser period, it may be extended to a maximum of two years in all.  I had read this to apply to the case of the PAO and in hindsight it is easy to see how you might link the word interim  and provisional, as they are very close in meaning.  In actual fact they are two very different and distinct types of processes and I made a honest mistake in confusing these two and I apologise for not double checking my facts.  The fact is that the PAO is not limited like interim adoptions to a two year period.

Does this mean that the GRO was correct?  While they were correct in saying that there was no legal restriction placed on the time frame inside of which a PAO could be enacted, there is another time frame for adoption in general.  The answer to the question ‘who can be adopted?’ is that to be eligible for adoption a child must be under the age of 18 years. A child who is married or has been married cannot be adopted.  In this framework as the last PAO was issued in the early 1970s, a child provisionally adopted would now be a minimum of 40 years old and so if they have not been formally adopted they would now be ineligible for adoption.

Link

I need to take a step back and answer some questions at the heart of my adoption.  I have been told that when I was adopted the process “was fairly simple and straight forward.  There is no doubt that many more regulations are in place now and hind sight is a great thing but at the time of [my] adoption, the whole process went smoothly.”

To answer this we need to look at a few facts. 1) a definition of what adoption is 2) what were the rules that were in place in the 1960’s to deal with adoption 3) is there any way that there could have been a misunderstanding in what a provisional adoption order was.

1) a definition of adoption

Adoption is a process whereby a person assumes the parenting for another and, in so doing, permanently transfers all rights and responsibilities, along with filiation, from the biological parent or parents. Unlike guardianship or other systems designed for the care of the young, adoption is intended to effect a permanent change in status and as such requires societal recognition, either through legal or religious sanction. Adoption – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Every culture has their own way of dealing with the issue of adoption.  Many answer the challenges of the permanent change in status through legal processes.  In recent times the Hague Adoption Convention has become an internationally recognised convention dealing with the issue of international adoption.  Whatever the name of the process or convention the underlining idea is the safeguarding and protection of the child that is to be adopted.  In this regard there is little that is ‘simple’ it is in fact incredibly complex, as it should be.

2) What rules were in place in the UK that governed adoption in the 1960s & early 1970s

While there were early regulations governing adoption in the UK, the first modern regulations were known as the Adoption Act 1958 and came into force on 1 April 1959.  This was the result of the report of the Hurst Committee, delivered in September 1954.  On the basis of the Committee’s findings new laws were put into place governing the consent of the natural parents, qualifications of adopters, adoption procedure and the procedure used in cases where the adoption is disputed.  In addition to the regulations put in place by the UK government, the government also accepted the European Convention for the Adoption of Children in 1968.  This placed further requirements on the process of adoption that all involved with adoption in the UK had to adhere to.

Some today will look back at this period as a simpler time in the development of adoption, the reality is very different.  The basis of much of today’s adoption law is based upon the developments following the Adoption Acts 1958.  The one thing that the Adoption Act 1958 cannot be accused of was being simple, it was a very complex piece of legislature that was attempting to ensure the safety of the child facing adoption.  It may not have been successful in all that it attempted to do, but in the development of adoption law it was a landmark.

3) Could there have been a misunderstanding of what a provisional adoption order was?

Given that:

1) this was the focus of a number of Commons debates and was discussed in the papers, this was not a piece of legislature that the public were unaware of.

2) there were only two options available, adoption order for those who were resident in the UK and provisional adoption order if you were not.  The requirements for gaining one of these were slightly different from the other.

3) the adoption agencies were concious of the change of legislation required of them for international adoption

4) the solicitors involved with preparing the paperwork for the County Court would have known the difference

5) the process for gaining a provisional adoption order took double the time than a regular adoption order, it is highly unlikely that someone at some point would not have mentioned the two options needed.

6) In my case I have letters from lawyers in the USA vouching for my ‘adopted parents’ and offering their services to complete the adoption in the USA.

Given all of these factors I think that it is a long stretch of the imagination to believe that someone either did not know or misunderstood what it was that they were getting when the applied for a provisional adoption order.

 

Some new directions

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Since my initial discover of the words Provisional Adoption Order on my birth certificate eight weeks ago I have been on a very steep learning curve.  I have had many a break-through but also suffered a number of set backs.  While I am working on a proper post which I hope to post later on this week I needed to post this.

After a wait of seven weeks the General Records Office have finally responded to my initial question.  That question was ‘what is my status now that I have discovered that I was not adopted?’  The earth shattering response that I have received is……’we are not able to give legal advice’  Thanks A. (who was too busy to even speak to me) and to D. for giving me some advice that was  wrong.  That answer was really worth waiting seven weeks for, especially as this does not answer the question.

The only bit of information that I was able to gain from the General Records Office was about the last person that they dealt with who had been provisionally adopted.  It turns out that he had been living in the USA with his adopted American family, had served in their armed forces and was established there.  When the truth of his provisional adoption was discovered, the American government started the process of deporting him as an illegal alien.  So there are others like me out there!

If you are someone that has experienced a ‘Provisional Adoption Order’ get in contact, I would love to hear from you.

Found Nothing

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I had been sorting out our official papers following my son’s eighteenth birthday when I spotted it for the first time.  In a separate column on my adoption birth certificate were the words ‘Provisional Adoption Order granted October 1969 by Sheffield County Court’.  I know that I had seen this thousands of times before but the words had never really sunk in.  I had always just breezed over them without thinking too much about it, I guess that I just assumed that this was the standard wording on everyones certificate.  Yet this time I looked a little closer.

provisional –

prəˈvɪʒ(ə)n(ə)l/
adjective
  • arranged or existing for the present, possibly to be changed later.
  1. “a provisional government”

What did this mean? That I was provisionally adopted?  If that was the case then where was my official adoption certificate?

I started to look into what this Order might be and came to this page on Wikipedia that dealt with the Adoption Act of 1953.  The key sentence is this one: The Act also created a “provisional adoption order”, issuable by the High Court or County Court, which allows an adopter not domiciled in Britain to adopt a child under the law of the country in which he lives. Such adoption orders require six months notice, and the child must have been in the adopter’s care in Britain for at least six months. Orders last for two years, and are designed to act as a place holder until the adopter’s nation authorises the adoption of the child.  

All of this meant that my ‘intended parents’ had been given a travel permit in order to leave the country with me for the purpose of adoption.  This was not an adoption.  Surely my parents had adopted me in their country of origin? But had they?

After a day of working through the implications of what this meant I reluctantly called my adopted mother and asked.  That was when the final nail was hammered home – I was told that they had never even started the adoption process in their country of origin or in any other country.  And so it came crashing home to me, I could not use my pre-adoption identity because of the rules of the UK government, but neither could I use the identity that I had been given because legally it was not mine.  In the eyes of the law, my birth parents had given me up but my intended adoptive parents had never legally adopted me either.  My birth certificate should have been indicated a completed adoption, but in actual fact I had found nothing permanent.