CopyCited 3 times | Published | Florida 4th District Court of Appeal | 2000 WL 314472
...ore concluding, we note that the court expressed its concern that the siblings, who asserted a desire for visitation with the adopted minor, have an opportunity to get to know each other in the future. Given the adopted minor's statutory right under section 63.0427 to "have the court consider the appropriateness of postadoption communication or contact, including, but limited to, visits, letters and cards, or telephone calls, with his or her sibling who are not included in the petition for adopt...
...and contact with their sibling after the adoption becomes final. It is clear that a final order of adoption severs all legal relationships between the adopted child and her blood relatives. See §
63.172(1)(b), Fla. Stat. (1999). On the other hand, section
63.0427 also provides that: "A child ......
...right to have the court consider the appropriateness of postadoption communication or contact, including, but not limited to, visits, letters and cards, or telephone calls, with his or her siblings who are not included in the petition for adoption." § 63.0427(1), Fla....
...Hence, focusing only on the statutory text, I would deem irrelevant whether the children had any history of communicating or contact, at least as regards the distinct question whether the siblings themselves can raise the issue of future contacts. I think that section 63.0427 carries over a corresponding interest of the adopted child's siblings to have the court consider future contacts after the adoption is final....
...An associational right is necessarily reciprocal: A has the right to associate in some way with B; it corresponds with a right of B to associate with A. If B has no right to associate with A, A 's associational right is meaningless as regards B. One is useless without the other. Thus, I construe section 63.0427 to create an associational interest among biological siblings, at least to the extent of having the court presiding over the adoption of one of them to consider the subject of *758 continued contact among them even after the adoption...
...to the future possibility of such contacts. And while it is true that section
63.022 is merely a statement of legislative intent and does not purport in so many words to "provide a basis for legal standing," that same construction cannot be said of section
63.0427, which does provide such a basis....
