Adoption (Amendment) Act 2017

Amendment of section 3 of Principal Act

3. Section 3(1) of the Principal Act is amended—

(a) by the insertion of the following definitions:

“ ‘Act of 1964’ means the Guardianship of Infants Act 1964 ;

‘Act of 2010’ means the Civil Partnership and Certain Rights and Obligations of Cohabitants Act 2010 ;

‘civil partner’ shall be construed in accordance with section 3 of the Act of 2010;

‘cohabitant’ shall be construed in accordance with section 172(1) of the Act of 2010;

‘cohabiting couple’ means 2 adults who are cohabitants of each other and who have been living together as cohabitants for a continuous period of not less than 3 years;

‘donor-conceived child’ has the same meaning as it has in Part 2 of the Children and Family Relationships Act 2015 ;

‘father’, in relation to a child, includes a man who is, under section 5 of the Children and Family Relationships Act 2015 , a parent of the child where that child is a donor-conceived child;

‘relevant non-guardian’ means, in relation to a child—

(a) a father of the child who is not a guardian of the child pursuant to the Act of 1964,

(b) a parent of the child under section 5 of the Children and Family Relationships Act 2015 who is not a guardian pursuant to the Act of 1964,

(c) a person who is appointed as a guardian of the child pursuant to section 6C of the Act of 1964 where subsection (9) of that section applies to that appointment but in respect of which the court has not made an order that the person enjoys the rights and responsibilities specified in subsection (11)(f) of that section, or

(d) a person appointed by the court to be a temporary guardian of the child under section 6E of the Act of 1964;

‘step parent’ has the meaning assigned to it by section 37;”,

(b) by the substitution of the following definition for the definition of “parent”:

“ ‘parent’ means, in relation to a child—

(a) the mother or father of the child, or

(b) a woman (other than the mother) who is, under section 5 of the Children and Family Relationships Act 2015 , a parent of the child where that child is a donor-conceived child,

and includes an adopter of the child;”,

(c) by the substitution, in the definition of “guardian”, of the following paragraph for paragraph (a):

“(a) is a guardian of the child pursuant to the Act of 1964, other than a guardian appointed—

(i) under section 6C of that Act where subsection (9) of that section applies to that appointment but the court has not made an order that that person enjoys the rights and responsibilities specified in subsection (11)(f) of that section, or

(ii) under section 6E of that Act, or”,

(d) in the definition of “relative”, by the substitution of “relationship to the child being traced through a parent of that child” for “relationship to the child being traced through the mother or father”, and

(e) by the deletion of the definition of “orphan”.