Adoption and Children Act 2002 Explanatory Notes

Section 74: Miscellaneous enactments

203.Section 74 provides that the general principle of section 67 (that an adopted person is to be treated as if he had been born as the child of the adopter or adopters) is not to apply for the purposes of marriages within prohibited degrees of relationship or to incest, and for these purposes an adopted person remains part of his natural family. The only exception is that an adopted person cannot marry his adoptive parent, as this falls within the restrictions set out in the table of kindred and affinity in Schedule 1 to the Marriage Act 1949. Otherwise there are no restrictions on marriage within an adoptive family.

204.Subsection (2) lists other enactments which deal with questions of nationality and immigration, and to which the general principle of section 67 is also not to apply.

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