The Adoption (Designation of Overseas Adoptions) Order 1973

1.  This Order may be cited as the Adoption (Designation of Overseas Adoptions) Order 1973 and shall come into operation on 1st February 1973.

2.  The Interpretation Act 1889 shall apply to the interpretation of this Order as it applies to the interpretation of an Act of Parliament.

3.—(1) An adoption of an infant is hereby specified as an overseas adoption if it is an adoption effected in a place in relation to which this Article applies and under the law in force in that place.

(2) As respects any adoption effected before the date on which this Order comes into operation, this Article applies in relation to any place which, at that date, forms part of a country or territory described in Part I or II of the Schedule to this Order and as respects any adoption effected on or after that date, this Article applies in relation to any place which, at the time the adoption is effected, forms part of a country or territory which at that time is a country or territory described in Part I or II of the Schedule to this Order.

(3) In this Article the expression—

“infant” means a person who at the time when the application for adoption was made had not attained the age of 18 years and had not been married;

“law” does not include customary or common law.

4.—(1) Evidence that an overseas adoption has been effected may be given by the production of a document purporting to be—

(a) a certified copy of an entry made, in accordance with the law of the country or territory concerned, in a public register relating to the recording of adoptions and showing that the adoption has been effected; or

(b) a certificate that the adoption has been effected, signed or purporting to be signed by a person authorised by the law of the country or territory concerned to sign such a certificate, or a certified copy of such certificate.

(2) Where a document produced by virtue of paragraph (1) of this Article is not in English, the Registrar General or the Registrar General of Births, Deaths and Marriages for Scotland, as the case may be, may require the production of an English translation of the document before satisfying himself of the matters specified in section 8 of the Adoption Act 1968.

(3) Nothing in this Article shall be construed as precluding proof, in accordance with the Evidence (Foreign, Dominion and Colonial Documents) Act 1933, or the Oaths and Evidence (Overseas Authorities and Countries) Act 1963 or otherwise, that an overseas adoption has been effected.

Robert Carr

One of Her Majesty's Principal Secretaries of State

Home Office

Whitehall

1st January 1973