STANDING TO REQUEST TERMINATION AND ADOPTION
Applied in 16 court decisions — leading case In the Interest of Walters (2001)
Most recently applied in Arthur & Enedilia Martinez v. Gloria Estrada (December 2012)
Added by Acts 1995, 74th Leg., ch. 20, Sec. 1, eff
Court decisions citing this, by year. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.
An original suit requesting only an adoption or for termination of the parent-child relationship joined with a petition for adoption may be filed by:
(1) a stepparent of the child;
(2) an adult who, as the result of a placement for adoption, has had actual possession and control of the child at any time during the 30-day period preceding the filing of the petition; or
(3) an adult who has adopted, or is the foster parent of and has petitioned to adopt, a sibling of the child.
Official source: Texas Constitution and Statutes. Reproduced from public-domain Texas statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.