States start to crack down on parents 're-homing' their adopted kids

Among pet owners, "re-homing" an unwanted dog or cat is a relatively straightforward process. The owner who seeks an alternative home often places an ad on the Internet, and a private transaction occurs that moves the pet to a new family. But with the rise of foreign adoptions of children and the inability of some parents to handle troubled youths, more and more desperate families are taking that approach with adopted youngsters and re-homing the children with strangers. Often those re-homed children report gruesome tales of physical, sexual or emotional abuse by their new guardians.

The process of re-homing has been largely unregulated—no federal laws prohibit the exchange of unwanted adopted kids. Most states allow private adoptions, but the processes vary widely and oversight is limited. In most cases, re-homing may be executed by a simple power-of-attorney letter or a notarized statement without government authorities or even any lawyers vetting the new parents.

Family lawyers are taking note. Re-homing "has only fairly recently come to public attention," says Tucson, Arizona, child welfare and custody lawyer Ann Haralambie. "Re-homing is not regulated; there's no legal framework to address it. It's mostly an underground affair."

By contrast, if adoption through a legal agency fails before it's legally final, the child can be returned to the agency in what's referred to as "disrupted adoption," according to McGeorge School of Law professor John Myers, author of Experiencing Family Law. The national rate of disruption is 10 to 20 percent. Since re-homing is done privately, there are no statistics monitoring the number of failed adoptions.

"Kids shouldn't be in want ads like: 'Our dog just had puppies. Want one for free?' " adds Haralambie, a former chair of the ABA Family Law Section's Juvenile Law and Needs of Children Committee. "That's precisely where people like the mentally ill and pedophiles go to get children. At best, it's abandonment, and at worst, it's human trafficking."

Many parents of adopted children are desperate. Serious problems erupt when agencies don't screen potential adoptive parents or the child's special needs aren't disclosed. Often, those needs result from neglect or mistreatment by birth parents or at overloaded orphanages.

Both domestically and internationally there's woefully slim pre-adoption training and post-adoption support. As a result, some kids may end up destroying property, becoming violent and resisting nurturing by their new parents.

"Parents and children are not properly matched, and parents aren't vetted as carefully," says University of Baltimore law professor Barbara Babb, director of the Sayra and Neil Meyerhoff Center for Families, Children and the Courts. "People may be adopting older children who can have attachment issues."
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