Establishes procedures regarding orders of post-termination visitation and/or contact between a child and such child's parent

◆ The sponsor's argument

Why Jabari Brisport says this is needed

The Preserving Family Bonds Act reflects a growing national consensus that openness in adoption is beneficial for adoptees, birth parents, and adoptive parents and brings New York law in line with the federal government's most recent guidance on achieving permanency for children in foster care, which encouraged states to make greater efforts to main- tain children's ties to their families and communities of origin even after adoption. This guidance made clear that in the vast majority of cases, "adoption should be viewed as an opportunity to expand a child's experience of family rather than replace their previous family," and that children's relationships with their biological parents, siblings, and extended family members should continue even after termination of parental rights and adoption. "Children do not need to have previous attachments severed in order to form new ones. In fact, they will be better positioned to develop new relationships if we work to preserve their original connections, sparing them from additional grief and loss. Current law in New York provides for open adoption and post-termination visitation and/or contact when a parent voluntarily surrenders their parental rights but does not give courts any authority to allow for contact between children and biological parents after a parent's rights have been terminated. For many years, New York State judges in the Second and Fourth Appellate Divisions were authorized to order post-termination contact pursuant to case law. That practice changed after the Court of Appeals held in June 2012 in Matter of Hailey ZZ that judges did not have the explicit authority to grant post-termination contact. The Court reasoned that "the Legislature, the entity best suited to balance the critical social policy choices and the delicate issues of family relations involved in such matters, has not sanctioned judicial imposition of post-termination contact where parental rights are terminated after a contested proceed- ing. As a result of the Halley ZZ decision, parents who do not surrender their parental rights risk losing all contact with their children if they choose to defend their rights in a termination of parental rights proceeding and lose-and children's ability to remain connected to their parents hinges on the manner in which their parents' rights were severed. Yet the difference between a voluntary surrender of parental rights and an involuntary termination by the court is a procedural one; it has nothing to do with the strength of the bond between the parent and their child, or the child's need to maintain some form of contact with their family of origin following adoption. This legislation seeks to recognize the value that post-termination contact between children and parents has for many children, especially those who have strong bonds with their biological family members. Specifically, it would provide the family court with the authority to order post-termination visitation and/or contact between a child and their biological parent after a termination of parental rights, subject to the best interests of the child. The bill gives the court the discretion to determine the appropriate type of contact for a given family, which may include, but is not limited to, supervised visitation by a family member or unsuper- vised visitation, telephone calls, emails, letters, exchange of pictures, social media, and skype or other forms of video chat. If the parent, child, and the child's foster parents, do not all consent to the order of post-termination visitation and/or contact, the bill requires the court to hold a hearing to determine whether such an order is in the child's best interest. The bill ensures that parents and chil- dren who are parties to the termination proceeding, as well as the child's foster parents; have standing to participate in this hearing. It places the burden of establishing that contact would be in the child's best interest on the party seeking the orde

This is the sponsor's own case for the bill, quoted from their memorandum. It is not Agora's description of what the bill does.