Valerie Sterling appears in Court of Appeal adoption case: M (A Child: Adoption: Duty of Disclosure) [2026] EWCA Civ 568

M (A Child: Adoption: Duty of Disclosure) (2026) EWCA Civ 568 11 May 2026

In the Court of Appeal (Civil Division) on appeal from the Family Court at Newcastle Her Honour Judge Hudson

Royal Court of Justice Strand London 11 May 2026

Before Lord Justice Peter Jackson, Lord Justice Warby and Lord Justice Cobb

Valerie Sterling instructed by Mortons Law represented the children’s guardian.

In M (A Child: Adoption: Duty of Disclosure) (2026) EWCA Civ 568 handed down on 11 May 2026 the Court of Appeal set aside an adoption order because the prospective adopters had concealed vital information from the Family Court.

There had been several key deceptions by the prospective adopters. They were a married couple who had presented and been assessed as having a strong and stable relationship. However, they had not been open about the breakdown of their relationship during the final stages of the adoption process. 

Key principles of Re M

• Duty of full and frank disclosure: The prospective adopters have an absolute duty to disclose all significant changes in their circumstances to the court and the local authority. See in particular paragraph 25 per Lord Justice Peter Jackson – ‘each prospective adopter is under a clear duty to the court to make full and frank disclosure about their circumstances at every stage of the process up to the making of an adoption order. That duty will be breached if the court is misled by a prospective adopter’s words, deeds or silence.’
• Serious procedural irregularity: A failure to disclose fundamental facts, such as the breakdown of a marriage or a new relationship with a serving prisoner, amounts to a ‘serious irregularity’.
• Rendering proceedings unjust: If a court is misled, the original adoption proceedings are considered ‘unjust’, which provides the legal basis to set the order aside on appeal. 
• Restoration of the care order: When an adoption order is set aside due to such non-disclosure, the child’s legal status reverts, and the previous care order in favour of the (relevant) local authority is restored. 
• The appeal route: The only way legally to undo an adoption order is through an appeal based on an error or irregularity – like the fraud/non-disclosure situation in Re M – that occurred at the time the adoption order was made. 
• The Court of Appeal set aside the adoption order because it had been made on a “fundamentally mistaken basis”.  T’s future will now be decided by the Family Court. 
• Re M follows on from the Supreme Court case of Re X and Y (Children: Adoption Order: Setting Aside) (2026) UKSC 13 (22 April 2026) which affirmed that adoption orders are permanent and cannot be revoked under the High Court’s inherent jurisdiction. Re M shows that an adoption order may still be overturned in the rare case of procedural unfairness or misleading information at the time the order was made. 

Facts

The respondent child, who was a two-year-old boy ‘T’, had his adoption overturned by the Court of Appeal after his adoptive mother failed to disclose that she was in a relationship with a male prisoner at a prison where she worked. 

The court set aside the adoption order made on 21 November 2025 on the basis that the court was misled about the true circumstances of the adoptive couple.  

T was placed for adoption with a married couple in May 2025 and was formally adopted in November 2025. 

On 9 January 2026, there was a celebration visit hosted by the judge at court to mark T’s adoption attended by T with his adoptive parents who presented as a couple together with the adoptive paternal grandparents and T’s former social worker.

But on 21 January 2026 T’s former social worker received information that the adoptive couple had separated and that the adoptive mother was in a relationship with a male prisoner at a prison where she worked and investigations gave rise to the following emerging picture: 

• The adoptive father had moved out of the family home in mid-October 2025 to live with his parents (ie prior to the final adoption hearing on 21 November 2025)
• On the day the adoption order was made the council tax office had been informed that the adoptive father had moved out of the family home
• The prisoner was in custody for a drug-related offence
• The prisoner had given the adoptive mother’s address as the address to which he was to be released – his release date was 3 March 2026
• The prisoner had since October 2025 referred to T as his “stepson”
• The adoptive mother had taken the child T to visit the prisoner in late November 2025 and again in February 2026 
• The adoptive mother had initially denied any relationship with the prisoner, but the following day admitted it
• The adoptive mother had been caring for the prisoner’s XL bully dog
• The adoptive father had begun divorce proceedings in February 2026

‘In the present case the adoptive parents withheld crucial information about the state of their own relationship from T’s adoption agency (LA1), from their own adoption agency, and from the court’. (Per Lord Justice Peter Jackson at paragraph 30). 

And at paragraph 30:

“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 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.’ 

Authors

Valerie Sterling

Call 1981

Related areas

Family

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