How Do I Apply to Adopt a Child in Papua New Guinea?

This is the question we are asked most often, and the honest answer is that the Adoption of Children Act (Chapter 275) tells you what must be satisfied but not, in any user-friendly way, how to go about it. What follows is the sequence the Act sets up, in the order you will meet it.

Before anything else, one decision: do you actually need a court order? If the child is a relative, everyone in both families agrees, and nothing outside the community turns on proving parentage, adoption by custom under section 53 may already have done the job — and a Local Court certificate under section 54 may be all the paper you need. Our article on customary adoption covers that route. A National Court order is for when you need the full, permanent, nationally uniform change of parentage.

Step 1: Check that you clear the eligibility gates

There is no point starting until you can answer yes to all of these.

• Residence. At the time the application is filed, you (and if you are applying jointly, each of you) must be resident or domiciled in the country, and the child must be present in the country — section 3(1). This is jurisdictional. In Application for adoption by Rosalind Dawn Glass (2016) N6358 an otherwise strong application failed because the applicant was living in Australia when it was filed.
• Marriage. An adoption order is made in favour of a husband and wife jointly, unless the Court is satisfied that "exceptional circumstances make it desirable" to make it in favour of one person — section 7(1) and 7(2). A married person cannot adopt alone unless living separately and apart from their spouse (section 7(3)).
• Age. You must be at least 21 (section 8). A male applicant must be at least 18 years older than the child; a female applicant at least 16 years older — unless one applicant is a natural parent, or the Court finds exceptional circumstances.
• The child. Under 21 when the application is filed, or someone you have brought up, maintained and educated as your own child (section 6(1)) — and not a person who is or has been married (section 6(2)).

Step 2: Go to the Office of Child and Family Services first

This is the step people skip, and skipping it wastes months.

Section 9(1) says the Court "shall not make an order for the adoption of a child unless the Director has made a written report to the Court concerning the proposed adoption". The Act calls this officer the Director of Child Welfare; the function now sits with the Director of the Office of Child and Family Services, within the Department for Community Development and Religion.

The Director's involvement is not a formality:

• the report goes to the Court, and the Court must consider it before it can be satisfied of the matters in section 9(1);
• under section 66 the Director, or a person appointed for the purpose, "may appear at the hearing … and may address the Court and call, examine and cross-examine witnesses";
• under section 64 the report is confidential — it "shall not be made available to any person, including a party to the proceedings", except as the Court otherwise orders. You will very likely never read what it says about you.

Expect an assessment process: interviews, a home visit, character and financial checks, and inquiries about the child's circumstances. Start it early and cooperate fully.

Note also section 23: once every required consent has been given as a general consent, or dispensed with, the Director becomes the guardian of the child until an adoption order is made or one of the other events in section 23(1) occurs. In a placement adoption the Director is not an observer — he is legally the child's guardian.

Step 3: Get the medical report

Section 9(3) requires a report in the prescribed form on the physical and mental condition of the child, signed by a medical practitioner who examined the child not more than 30 days before the date the application is filed.

Thirty days is a short window. Book the examination once your documents are otherwise ready, not before.

Section 9(4) excuses the report where the child has attained the age of 21, or where the applicant is a relative of the child, or where one of two applicants is a parent or relative. "Relative" is defined in section 1 as a grandparent, brother, sister, uncle or aunt, of the whole or half blood or by affinity.

Step 4: Sort out consents

Covered in full in our article on consent, but in summary: you need the consent of the appropriate persons under section 15(2) — the parents and guardians of a legitimate child, the mother and guardians of an illegitimate child, the adoptive parents and guardians of a previously adopted child. Guardians include a guardian by custom.

The consent must be in the prescribed form, signed and authenticated (section 18), and it cannot be relied on if signed before the birth (section 20(2)) or within seven days after it unless the mother is proved to have been in a fit condition (section 20(3)). It can be revoked by written notice to the Registrar of the Court within 30 days of signing, or before the order is made, whichever is earlier (section 17).

Where a consent cannot be obtained, apply to dispense with it under section 21 — the grounds include that the person cannot be found or identified after reasonable inquiry, or has failed for at least a year without reasonable cause to discharge parental obligations.

And if the child is 12 or older, get the child's consent (section 22).

Step 5: File in the National Court

Only the National Court can make an adoption order (sections 1 and 2). Applications are commenced in the National Court registry, in practice by originating summons — the Glass decision, for example, was proceeding OS No. 298 of 2015.

There is no publicly available plain-English guide to the forms and fees, and the Act's own forms are prescribed by regulation. This is a step where a lawyer earns their fee. If cost is the barrier, ask the Office of the Public Solicitor whether they can assist.

Step 6: Give 14 days' notice

Section 10(1) requires the applicants to have given not less than 14 days' notice of the application —

• (a) to any person whose consent is required under section 15 but has not been given; and
• (b) to any other person "with whom the child resides, or who has the care or custody of the child."

Section 10(2) is easy to miss and important: the notice "shall not specify the name or names of the applicants or identify them." The whole scheme is built to keep the adopters' identity from the birth family.

Section 10(3) allows the Court, on written application, to dispense with notice. Section 10(4) allows the Court to direct that notice be given to any person where it appears necessary in the interests of justice.

Under section 11, the Court may permit persons to be joined as parties for the purpose of opposing the application, or of opposing an application to dispense with someone's consent.

Step 7: The hearing

Section 62: an application under the Act "shall not be heard in open court", and persons who are not parties, or their lawyers or representatives, are excluded unless the Court permits.

Section 68 relaxes the usual rules of evidence: the Court "may act on any statement, document, information or matter that, in the opinion of the Court, may assist it to deal with the matter of the proceedings, whether or not [it] would otherwise be admissible in evidence." This is a welfare jurisdiction, not a trial.

Over all of it sits section 5: "the welfare and interest of the child concerned shall be regarded as the paramount consideration."

Step 8: The order — or an interim order

If the Court is satisfied, it makes the adoption order.

It may instead make an interim order under section 33 — postponing the decision and giving the applicants custody of the child, on such terms as to maintenance, education and welfare as the Court thinks proper. An interim order may run for up to one year at a time and not more than two years in aggregate (section 34), and it ceases when an adoption order is made (section 35(2)). The Court cannot make an interim order in favour of people who could not lawfully adopt the child (section 33(3)).

After the order, section 14(1) requires the judge to seal the identifying documents in an envelope and send it to the Director; the applicants receive an abridged copy of the order. The Registrar then forwards an office copy to the Registrar General under section 59, and the birth is re-registered under the Civil Registration Act.

What does it cost, and how long does it take?

The Act is silent, and PNG courts do not publish an adoption fee schedule.

The best publicly available indication comes from the United States Department of State's country information page for intercountry adoption from PNG, which describes legal fees in the range of K10,000 to K12,000 and a timeline of nine months or more, excluding any residency period. Treat that as a rough guide, not an authority: it is a foreign government's summary written for prospective American adopters, not a PNG source, and a straightforward domestic relative adoption should be simpler and cheaper.

What you must not do

Three offences catch well-meaning families.

• Section 42 — payments. It is an offence to make, give or receive a payment or reward for an adoption, for the giving or signing of a consent, for the transfer of possession or control of a child with a view to adoption, or for conducting negotiations or making arrangements for an adoption. Penalty: a fine not exceeding K400.00 or six months' imprisonment. The only permitted payments are legal expenses; hospital and medical expenses reasonably incurred in connection with the birth or the ante-natal or post-natal care of the mother or child, made by the adopters with the written approval of the Director or with the approval of the Court; and any other payment or reward authorised by the Director or by the Court.
• Section 43 — private arrangements. A person other than the Director, or someone acting on the Director's behalf, who conducts negotiations or makes arrangements with a view to an adoption, or transfers possession or control of a child for that purpose, commits an offence — fine up to K400.00 or three months' imprisonment. Section 43(2) exempts anything done by a parent, guardian or relative with a view to adoption by a relative.
• Section 44 — advertising. Publishing an advertisement or news item indicating that a parent wishes to have a child adopted, that a person wishes to adopt, or that someone is willing to make arrangements, is an offence — fine up to K400.00 or six months' imprisonment — unless approved by the Director.

Under section 51, proceedings for an offence against the Act can only be commenced by the Public Prosecutor or with his written consent. And note the penalties themselves. The maximum fine across the offence provisions of this Act is K400.00, a figure that has stood unchanged in the consolidated text for decades. Do not read low fines as a signal that these prohibitions are unimportant — they are the provisions that stand between adoption and the sale of children, and a court has other tools than the fine.