The Court of Appeal looked at an adoption case in which the adopters had not been open and transparent about the true status of their relationship and situation.
M (A Child: Adoption: Duty of Disclosure) [2026] EWCA Civ 568 (11 May 2026)
https://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2026/568.html
The child was placed with them in May 2025 and an adoption order was made in November 2025. On 9th January 2026 the adoptive parents and the child went to Court to have the traditional photographs taken with the Judge.
On 21st January 2026 the social worker received information that the adoptive parents had split up and that the adoptive mother, who worked as a prison officer, had formed a relationship with a male prisoner.
Investigations revealed that :-
AF had moved out of the home in mid-October 2025 to live with his parents.
On the day the adoption order was made, the council tax office was informed that AF had moved out of the family home.
The prisoner was in custody for a drug-related offence. His offending history included battery, possession of weapons, and drug offences. He had also been accused of sexual offending in respect of a child, but no further action had been taken.
He had given AM’s address as the address to which he was to be released, his release date being 3 March 2026.
He had since October 2025 referred to T as his “stepson”.
AM had taken T to visit the prisoner in late November 2025, and again on 13 February 2026.
AM had initially denied any relationship with the prisoner, but on the following day she admitted it.
She had further initially denied that T had had any contact with AM.
AM had been caring for the prisoner’s XL bully dog.
AF began divorce proceedings in February 2026.
I’ve certainly had thresholds that were weaker than that, and clearly not what anyone would expect of someone entering into the incredibly important role of adoption. I suspect that there are soap opera script writers who would dismiss this pitch as being a bit unrealistic, it just shows that human beings constantly surprise you with what complications they can add to their lives.
As the Court of Appeal said at the end of their judgment,
The consequence of each of these errors was that the court acted on a fundamentally mistaken basis. There was of course no fault on the part of the judge: on the basis of the information before her, every judge in the Family Court would have made an adoption order, while on the basis of the true facts, no judge could have done so.
The Court of Appeal set out the legal framework about the importance of the duty of candour on all parties who appear before the Court to be honest and not to mislead the Court whether by telling untruths or omitting to correct information which is now no longer true.
In their different ways, these cases involved misrepresentations made by prospective adopters to or about members of the birth family, and ultimately misrepresentations to the court. In the present case the adoptive parents withheld crucial information about the state of their own relationships from T’s adoption agency (LA1), from their own adoption agency, and from the court. The degree of responsibility that each adoptive parent and the members of their wider families may bear for this state of affairs will no doubt become more apparent in the ongoing care proceedings, and it would not be right for us to say more about that. What is entirely clear, and sufficient for the orders that we must make, is that the misinformation about the state of the adult relationships within T’s new family fundamentally undermined the court’s decision. The judge would certainly not have made an adoption order to joint applicants on 21 November 2025 if she had had doubts about the stability of their relationship or if she had had any hint of AM’s relationship with the prisoner. Had the true facts been known, she would either have dismissed the adoption application (if it was pursued) or would at least have caused further inquiries to be made.
As the grounds of appeal show, the situation that has arisen can be analysed in a number of ways. On appeal to this court, an appeal will be allowed where the decision of the lower court was (a) wrong; or (b) unjust because of a serious procedural or other irregularity in the proceedings in the lower court: CPR 52.21(3). In my view, both of these conditions are met in this case. The fresh evidence that has been admitted on appeal shows that:
(1) On the basis of the true facts that existed at the time of the hearing, an adoption order was the wrong order;
and that
(2) The failure by the prospective adopters to make full and frank disclosure of their circumstances amounted to a serious irregularity in the proceedings that rendered them unjust (not a commonplace procedural irregularity but an ‘other irregularity’ of a kind envisaged by the rule).
The Court of Appeal were not critical of any professional, who had been deceived by these adopters – at least since October 2025 a month before the order was made, but did highlight the importance of ensuring that the information provided in the assessment remained accurate by the time the order was being considered.
FOOTNOTE – for geeks only
On a technical issue of interest only to the uber-geek, the Local Authority who had held the Placement Order was not the same one who applied for the Interim Care Order to remove from the adoptive mother. That meant that when the order for adoption was set aside (because what happens there is that the legal status reverts to the Placement Order), two different Local Authorities each held PR for the child.
suesspiciousminds 