Adoption - Georgia Case Law Update
On March 5, 2009, the Georgia Court of Appeals reversed the trial court’s grant of a grandmother’s adoption petition in Owen v. Watts (A08A2012), something the appellate courts rarely do. The child had been removed from her home with her mother and grandmother and placed with a foster family. The grandmother then filed a petition to adopt the child and the foster parents, who had previously filed a petition to adopt the child, intervened in that action. The trial court granted the grandmother’s petition to adopt the child and the Court of Appeals reversed, finding that “there was no record evidence that supported a finding that the adoption was in the best interest of the child.” The grandmother’s testimony that she loved the child, had taken her to doctor’s appointments and had an appropriate house for the child to live in was held to be insufficient to meet this standard.
The Court of Appeals acknowledged that reversing the grant of adoption is something that the appellate courts rarely do, but rested its decision on the “plethora of evidence…from which the trial court could have concluded that an adoption by Watts was not in [the child’s] best interest.”
