Closed adoption, also called confidential adoption, is one of the three types of adoption observed in the United States. In a closed adoption, the adoptive family has little or no contact with the child’s biological family, and they have almost zero knowledge about each other’s family. The reason to choose such a type of adoption is to preserve privacy and to keep the record sealed for all the parties involved in the adoption.
Closed adoptions were commonly observed in the beginning years of 1950 in the United States, but the numbers declined in the following decades, and it is scarce in recent times. The original goal of such adoption is to keep the identity of the birth mother anonymous. Thus she could continue living an everyday life without negative social stigmas that were associated with unwed pregnancies.
Pros of a closed relationship
- Safety
Suppose the birth parent is considering a closed adoption because of an abusive and toxic environment that can ruin the child’s life. In that case, it is in everyone’s best interest to have minimal or no contact between the families.
- Privacy and Secrecy
The prospective birth parent can wish to keep their pregnancy and adoption plan a secret from the people in their lives for any number of reasons. A closed adoption can help at such times. In addition, closed adoption makes it easier to keep the pregnancy and adoption a secret for the long term.
- Better sense of Emotional closure
In many cases, open adoption is very painful and brutal to pursue. Many biological parents feel that a closed adoption will provide a better sense of emotional closure to them as they would process their feeling of grief and move on with their lives. (On the other hand, most parents find it comforting and opposite to be accurate. They want to see their child growing healthy, happy, and in a loving environment, and seeing this gives them a better emotional closure.)
As evident, the advantages of a closed adoption are very few, and most of them only apply in some specific situations. However, it is the right of the biological parent to make that decision. If the parent truly feels that closed adoption is the best way to go forward, their decision should be respected by the adoptive family. Click here to read more about closed adoption.
To know better about closed adoption, contacting a lawyer is recommended.
What are Father’s Visitation Rights?
The parent who gets custody gets to keep their child. Visitation rights are the rights given to the noncustodial parent. This right allows the noncustodial parent the time to visit and meet their child. The decision regarding custody and visitation is made keeping the best interest of the child in mind. A court rarely refuses visitation rights to a parent entirely.
Court considers the following point when deciding the custody and visitation of the child:
- The location of each parent
- The daily work and life schedule of each parent
- The employment and work history of each parent
A father’s right to visitation simply means the father’s rights that he has to meet his child and spend time with the kid. Previously the law was stacked against fathers. Hence the mothers were often granted the child’s custody whether they were a better fit or not. It is no longer the case anymore. Regardless of which parent gets the custodial right.
The rights include.
- The right to meet their child at a designated time, as decided in the divorce decree
- The right to spend the allotted time with the child with no infringement
- The right to be free of other parents control over the child during visitation time
- The right to stop the other parent from moving the child out of the state or country.
- The right to alter divorce decree when such decree is no longer feasible
Father’s rights also include restrictions or non-rights of action that they make as a father. For example, the father cannot verbally attack the child’s mother to enforce his visitation right. In addition, the father cannot stop providing child support payment even if the mother violates his visitation rights. Want to know about visitation rights for fathers?
To conclude –
Even though rarely but closed adoptions are still happening in the United States. Being a father, if your child’s visitation rights are violated by the mother of the child or by anyone else, it is in your best interest to get in touch with a knowledgeable and skilled Child visitation attorney.
