Adoption Placement Act
Adoptionsvermittlungsgesetz (AdVermiG)
Act on the Placement of Children for Adoption and the Ban on Recruiting Surrogate Mothers (Adoption Placement Act – AdVermiG) in the version published on 22 December 2001 as amended by Art. 4 Para. 15 of the Act of 17 December 2006
Adoption placement involves bringing together children below the age of 18 and persons wishing to adopt a child (adoption applicants). Adoption placement is also evidence of the opportunity to adopt a child or to have a child adopted in cases when the child is not yet born or has not been fathered. Recruiting surrogate mothers is not regarded as adoption placement.
The Act stipulates that adoption placement is the responsibility of Youth Offices (Jugendamt) or Land Youth Offices (Landesjugendamt). A Youth Office may only handle adoption placements if it has created a special adoption placement unit. The Land Youth Office is to set up a central adoption agency. Youth Offices of neighbouring local authorities or counties may set up a joint adoption placement unit with the approval of the Land Youth Office’s central adoption agency. Several Land Youth Offices may also set up a joint adoption placement unit. In the Länder of Berlin, Hamburg and the Saarland, the responsibilities of the Youth Office’s adoption placement unit may be transferred to the Land Youth Office.
Local and central agencies of Diakonisches Werk, Deutscher Caritasverband, Arbeiterwohlfahrt and their affiliated professional associations, as well as other organisations headquartered in the Federal Republic of Germany, may also be entitled to act as adoption placement agencies when such agencies are recognized as adoption placement agencies by the Land Youth Office’s central adoption agency.
The provisions of this Act on international adoption placement apply in all cases in which the child’s or the adoption applicants’ habitual residence is abroad, or when the child was brought to Germany within a period of two years prior to the start of the adoption process. Within the scope of The Hague Convention of 29 May 1993 on Protection of Children and Co-operation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption (Hague Adoption Convention), the supplementary provisions of the Adoption Convention Implemention Act of 5 November 2001 also apply.
The best interests of the child must have priority in all adoptions. The rights of the child and its biological parents are to be respected. Consequently, Art. 21 of the United Nations’ Convention on the Rights of the Child of 20 November 1989 commits the signatory states especially to the principles of reviewing the child’s well-being, obtaining the consent of the biological parents as well as the supervision of national and inter-country adoptions by the signatory states. The Convention on the Rights of the Child also prohibits any form of child trafficking (Art. 35).
The purpose of The Hague Convention of 29 May 1993 on Protection of Children and Co-operation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption (Haager Adoptionsübereinkommen) is to ensure worldwide respect of these principles in adoption procedures. Germany ratified the Convention on 22 November 2001. It entered into force in Germany on 1 March 2002.
The Convention is applicable when a child living in one of the signatory states of the Convention is adopted by parents living in another signatory state (“host country”). It applies when the adoption is pronounced in the child’s country of origin and the child travels to the host country together with his/her adoptive parents, or when the prospective parents initially meet and take the child from his/her country of origin, and the adoption is subsequently performed in the host country.
Germany is primarily a “host country” – cases in which German adoption applicants wish to adopt a foreign child are by far the most frequent. The opposite case is relatively rare and primarily concerns the adoption of stepchildren or children of relatives.
The Convention lays down the prerequisites for inter-country adoption, the division of responsibilities and co-operation between authorities, the requirements for the certification and supervision of adoption placement agencies, as well as the recognition of adoptions in other signatory states of the Convention.
The Convention was implemented with the “Act on the Settlement of Legal Issues Regarding Inter-Country Adoptions and the Fur-ther Development of Adoption Placement Legislation” (Gesetz zur Regelung von Rechtsfragen auf dem Gebiet der internationalen Adoption und zur Weiterentwicklung des Adoptionsvermittlungsrechts), which entered into force on 1 January 2002. It does not only provide for the rules governing the execution of the Convention, it also introduces important new provisions regarding the adoption placement process and especially the process in case of inter-country adoptions involving non-signatories of the Convention.
Pursuant to the Convention, the German national authorities in-volved are the Office of the Chief Federal Prosecutor (General-bundesanwalt) at the Federal Court of Justice (Bundesgerichtshof) in its capacity as Federal Central Agency for Inter-Country Adoptions (Bundeszentralstelle für Auslandsadoption) and the central adoption agencies of the Land Youth Offices.
The following agencies have the right to act in inter-country adoption placement processes:
- the central adoption agencies of the Land Youth Offices,
- certified private inter-country placement agencies; the decision on their certification is the responsibility of the Land Youth Office in whose district the placement agency is located, and
- the local adoption placement unit of a Youth Office insofar as the Land Youth Office has granted permission to this unit to act in in-ter-country adoption placements.
