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Non-Exclusive Adoption And Child Welfare, Joshua Gupta-Kagan
Non-Exclusive Adoption And Child Welfare, Joshua Gupta-Kagan
Faculty Scholarship
This Article proposes that child welfare law permit the non-exclusive adoption of foster children who cannot reunify with their parents — that is, adoption by foster parents without severing children’s legal relationships with their biological parents. Present law imposes a choice: extended family members or other foster parents may adopt foster children exclusively — and terminate the legal relationship between the child and biological parents — or they may become guardians — which preserves parent–child relationships but denies foster parents the legal title of “parent,” even when they are long-term primary caretakers.
Non-exclusive adoption would respect the lived reality of …