A Change in the Law

A sneaky amendment to New Zealand's 1955 Adoption Act

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The mandate for Adoption Deconstructed is to empower adopted people through knowledge. If you are one of the 100,000 adopted adults in New Zealand, here’s something you may not know.

(While this is a New Zealand-focused issue, it reflects a broader, global pattern.)

If you plan to apply to the Family Court to try to access your adoption records, there has been an unreported change.

In 2023, amendments to the 1955 Adoption Act and the Family Court Act created a new role, the Family Court Associate.

An associate is a lawyer with seven years of experience. They manage uncontested matters involving the welfare of children under statutes like the Care of Children Act and the Oranga Tamariki Act.

This amendment also gives them the right to view the records of adults (of any age) who were adopted as infants.

And it empowers them with the right to decide if an adopted adult can access their records.

This was a function previously reserved for judges.

In private discussions with judges (they are not allowed to speak publicly), I often hear how frustrated they are with the restrictions they are required to implement on adopted people. The Law Commission notes that the approach taken by Family Court judges varies markedly throughout the country, with some judges applying a very rigid test and others construing the phrase (special grounds) liberally.

So, you might think these amendments could mean a loosening of the restrictions on accessing information that the government holds on you. Fresh eyes and attitudes. Or faster processing, broader access, or quicker decision-making?

Think again. These amendments serve a different purpose.

Perhaps because the newly appointed family court associate lacks the judicial training of a judge, the amendments now require a report from a Ministry for Children social worker.

The social workers’ report scrutinises an adopted adult’s motives, circumstances, and perceived “suitability” for accessing their records. In a case I’m privy to, the social worker refused to allow the adopted woman to see the report written about her. As another adopted woman said, “I’m 70 years old, why do I have to gain the approval of a 30-year-old social worker?”

Technically, this report requirement is not new. The provision was introduced in the 2000 amendment to the Adoption Act 1955.

According to a Law Commission observation and anecdotal evidence from my research, prior to 2023, the court’s power to request a social worker’s report was seldom exercised in practice. It certainly was not an aspect of my own application in 2018.

The Ministry for Children only made it visible in 2024 by updating its factsheet to state: “A social worker is usually asked by the Judge to review the record and provide a report.”

This is not just collateral language; it is calculated misdirection. It preserves the illusion of judicial authority and conceals the fact that adopted adults are now being assessed by non-judicial officials, informed by social worker reports rather than legal arguments or evidence.

It is now the social worker employed by the Ministry for Children who holds the majority of power over the lives, identities, and histories of adopted people.

Worse still, the legal framework can exclude the adopted person entirely from the process, as there is no guaranteed notice, no right to respond, appeal, or object, and no transparency.

And it obscures the fundamental power shift from the bench to the very bureaucracy that separated us from our families in the first place and has, in effect, gained control over our records.

It is a staggering injustice to treat adult citizens like permanent wards of the state. The Ministry for Children continues to treat mature adopted adults as perpetual children, denying them autonomy and agency in matters that concern their own identities.

No other citizens are treated in this way or exposed to such draconian laws.

Even the NZ Law Society, in a 2021 submission on adoption law reform, focused only on the rights of children and adopters. It failed entirely to recognise the lifelong restrictions and impacts on adults.

You can read about the experiences of adopted people trying to get even their most basic information from social workers here.

It has come at a time when the largest cohort of forcibly adopted people is entering older maturity. This cohort is increasingly aware of the actions taken against them and the growing restrictions on their fundamental human rights as citizens.

Adoption records are the only permanently sealed records in New Zealand, even after all involved parties are deceased. There is no automatic unsealing after 50, 80, or 100 years, unlike with other types of records.

Over the past seventy years, New Zealand’s adoption law has undergone procedural adjustments, administrative updates, and ideological reinforcement.

It has never been viewed from the perspective of adults taken in forced stranger adoption.

The slogan for the Ministry for the Disabled is “nothing about us, without us.”

In that spirit, it is time that the survivors of forced stranger adoption are treated with the same respect.

Are you even just a little outraged?

I am weighing up publishing my PhD thesis: How To Be Invisible: Adoption and the Manufacture of Identity, using a crowdfunding model. If you appreciate my writing here, the thesis (complete with 16 pages of references) is written in the same style with the same clarity.