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Community Corner

Must Adoption Agencies Disclose Medical History?

Attorney Renee E. Schell answers this family law question.

Editor's Note: Each week, attorney , whose practice is based on Hampton Road in Southampton Village, answers family law questions on Southampton Patch. Her answers are based on New York State law and family court decisions.

Q. Can an adoption agency be sued for failing to disclose a child's medical history to the adoptive parents?

A. When a childless couple contacted an adoption agency seeking to adopt a child, they told the agency interviewers that they wanted to know everything about the birth parents of any child they were being offered.

When a yet-unborn baby was referred to them for adoption, although the sealed referral summary had indicated that the birth mother had serious psychological problems, and the biological father had been diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic, such facts were never revealed to the couple by the agency.

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After the baby boy was adopted, he soon began to exhibit impulsive, hyperactive, loud and abusive behavior, even in his pre-school years. He struck his mother, threw things and walked in his sleep, at which point the adoptive parents contacted the adoption agency, demanding further information that had been deliberately withheld by the agency. The little boy was later diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic, capable of extreme violence, which resulted in his being permanently institutionalized.

The adoption agency was held legally accountable for their deliberate failure to disclose his medical background to the adoptive parents.

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