Home > JOURNALS > IJLSE > Vol. 13 (2025) > Iss. 1 (2025)
Abstract
While adoption procedures differ from state to state, every state uses some variation of the best interest of the child standard to determine the outcome of an adoption proceeding. To gather information for the best interest determination, states have created the home study process to investigate prospective adoptive families. A home study allows social workers and/or private adoption agencies to look at the needs of the child, the ability of the parents to care for the child, the existing familial dynamics, the safety of the physical home, the perceived moral character and reputation of the parents, mental and physical health conditions in the family, the financial state of the family, and similar factors. It may seem like a given that an adoptive family must have a certain level of economic resources to care for a child, but home studies often go beyond income and assets, instead factoring in current debts, credit scores, and bankruptcies.
This Article begins by identifying the broad discretion that states are given when investigating an adoptive family’s financial state, including looking at debt, credit scores, and past bankruptcies a family has. It then evaluates some ways the debt of adoptive parents may harm the child and how debt may impact a child differently based on the type of adoption. The Article then turns to how debt impacts the “non-ideal” family in unique ways and how the broad discretion to consider debt in the best interest of the child determination allows for social workers and/or adoption agencies to restrict legal family recognition to the normative ideal family. Finally, the Article looks at ways to avoid debt serving as justification to deny family recognition based on the biases of the social worker and/or adoption agency. This section looks both at the ways to modify the home study’s consideration of debt and changes to limit the need to consider a family’s debt.
Overall, this Article argues that the current discretion for how debt is used in the best interest of the child standard allows for biases against the non-ideal family. To solve this, this Article argues for changes both within the adoption process and to laws and social programs beyond adoption. These solutions include developing clear criteria for evaluating a family’s financial situation, adapting parentage laws to reduce the need to adopt, expanding debt forgiveness programs, and creating social support programs for all families. Recognizing how bias can enter adoptions through consideration of a parent’s financial situations will not solve every issue with the adoption process; however, it offers a place to start recognizing the problems and developing solutions.
Recommended Citation
13 Indiana Journal of Law and Social Equality 69