Unpacking the Family Backpack - Adult Adoption Working Group Update
The Adult Adoption Working Group has done extensive work to assist legal practitioners with the technicalities of applying for adoption of an adult, despite the lack of a clear framework in the Rules and associated forms. The students in the Disability, Health, and Income Security Division at Downtown Legal Services are expanding on this work by assisting practitioners to answer the question: what difference does adoption make to an adult, anyway?
Downtown Legal Services is composing a four-part manual, “Unpacking the Family Backpack,” which outlines legal rights and privileges in Ontario that depend on family status, conferred by blood or adoption. The four sections are:
Child support and support for parents;
Inheritance rights;
Substitute decision-making and health care;
Taxes and government benefits.
Each section considers the practical impact of adoption on a young person and suggests discussion points for a practitioner to raise with potential adoptees and potential adoptive parents.
In addition to providing a resource for legal practitioners, we hope that these materials can serve as a foundation for public education materials which illustrate the following:
Many rights and privileges in Ontario, especially those designed to assist Ontarians during times of need and crisis, are allocated by family status.
A person who does not have a legally recognized family experiences exclusion and disadvantage at many levels.
For those who wish to be adopted as adults, access to adoption is a human rights issue.
It is also our hope that the “family backpack” model can be used as a foundation to develop suggested best practices for an adult adoption application, including precedent affidavits by an adoptee and adopter.
If you are part of the legal profession and are interested in hearing more about this work, please email us at hello@nevertoolatentl.ca!
The Adult Adoption Working Group (AAWG) is a volunteer committee comprised of a group of individuals with expertise in the areas of practice that surround this area of permanency work – legal, child welfare, adoption practice, lived experience of being an adoptee and adoptive parents.
The main objectives of this working group are to provide an overview of the existing process for a legal adult adoption but also to make recommendations to various bodies for amendments, reforms and changes to facilitate a more effective process.