In re Adoption of B.B.

Summary

The Utah Supreme Court affirmed the denial of a biological father's motion to revoke his relinquishment of parental rights in an adoption proceeding. The court held that he identified no sufficient factual basis for involuntariness, that any failure to notify him of statutory counseling rights did not invalidate the relinquishment, and that his due process argument was inadequately supported. The court declined to reach the merits of his equal protection challenge because he lacked standing.

Holdings

1. A biological parent may challenge the enforceability of a consent and relinquishment on contract-law grounds such as duress, undue influence, misrepresentation, or deception, but S.A.S. failed to allege facts sufficient to support involuntariness or require an evidentiary hearing. The district court therefore correctly concluded that the relinquishment was voluntary.
2. The Due Process Clause does not require invalidation or revocation of a relinquishment merely because a biological parent was not notified of the statutory right to counseling. Utah Code section 78B-6-119(4)(c) makes monetary damages the remedy for failure to provide the notice and expressly states that the failure does not invalidate a relinquishment or consent.
3. S.A.S. lacked standing to assert his equal protection challenge because he did not show that the differential treatment of biological fathers and birth mothers caused his loss of parental rights or that the requested judgment would redress that injury. The court therefore declined to reach the merits and dismissed the equal protection claim.

Questions Presented

1. Whether the district court erred in determining that S.A.S.'s relinquishment of parental rights was voluntary and in denying an evidentiary hearing on his allegations of duress, undue influence, coercion, or fraud.
2. Whether a failure to notify a biological father of his statutory right to counseling invalidates his relinquishment of parental rights under the Due Process Clause.
3. Whether Utah Code section 78B-6-124's different execution requirements for birth mothers and biological fathers violate the Equal Protection Clause, and whether S.A.S. had standing to raise that challenge.

Disposition

affirmed