Illegality Pitfalls In Independent Adoptions

1. Buying, selling, or attempting to buy or sell any person to another or paying or receiving anything of value for having a person placed in the custody of another. Penal Code S181.
2. Paying a parent anything of value for the placement for adoption, for consent to adoption, or for cooperation in the completion of an adoption of his or her child. Penal Code S273(a).
3. Obtaining benefits from prospective adoptive parents for the payment of hospital or medical expense or financial benefits such as necessary living expenses related to the pregnancy of the birth mother or the birth of a prospective adoptee with the intent to receive the benefits and not complete this adoption or consent to the adoption. Penal Code S273(b). (Note: Penal Code S273 permits the payment of maternity-connected medical or hospital and necessary living expenses as an act of charity).
4. Advertising placement of children for adoption or publishing a solicitation of a child for adoption without holding a license or permit to place children for adoption. Family Code S86O9(a).
5. Placing a child for adoption without holding a license or permit to do so (this prohibition does not apply to the parent of a child placed for adoption). Family Code S8609(b).
6. Intentional falsification of the accounting report made under penalty of perjury, which accounting report requires a full accounting of all disbursements of anything of value made by the adoptive petitioners in connection with the birth of the child, the placement of the child with petitioners, any medical or hospital care received by the natural mother of the child or by the child, in connection with its birth, or any other expenses of either natural parent of the child, or the adoption. Family Code S8610.
7. Wrongfully concealing or removing the prospective adoptee from the county in which the adoption is pending. Family Code S8803. Also see Penal Code S280.