Mcle Article: What Is a Paca?

• Publication year: 2017
• Author: John Nieman

MCLE Article: What is a PACA?

John Nieman

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Juvenile Dependency Courts frequently must choose a permanent plan for children outside of their parents' home(s). This is usually a last resort after exhaustion of all options to prevent removal and all reasonable efforts to return children to their parents. The law strongly prefers adoption when children need a permanent home outside that of their parents, because it is the most secure and the most permanent.

California law recognizes that it may be in the best interest of some children to continue to have contact with certain members of their birth family even after they are adopted. To have that continued contact, the prospective adoptive parents, birth relatives, or sibling care providers can enter into an agreement called a Postadoption Contact Agreement ("PACA"). PACAs can only include continued contact for adopted children with their siblings, birth parents, grandparents and other relatives. PACAs can include some, all, or none of these birth family members; agreements with birth relatives who don't have a pre-existing relationship with the child can only include information exchange, not visitation. Except for these limitations, PACAs can reflect as much or as little contact as the parties decide. There is neither a minimum nor maximum amount of contact, information sharing, and/or visitation permitted. Any type of contact, which can range from an annual letter to unsupervised overnight visits, and any combination of contact types, can be included in the agreement.

An agreement must be in the adopted child's best interests. Additionally, entering into a PACA is voluntary for all participants. Therefore, the court may not order anyone to participate in discussions or negotiations to produce an agreement, and no one participating in discussions or negotiations is required to agree to postadoption contact. If an agreement is reached, it will

John Nieman, Esq., is a Dependency Advocacy Center Founder and has been working in Santa Clara County's dependency system as an attorney and supervisor for over 18 years. He has partnered and collaborated locally and statewide on numerous workgroups, committees, and task forces in areas. He served as faculty for National Counsel for Juvenile and Family Court Judges and the Administrative Office of the Courts. Mr. Nieman holds an MS in Marriage, Family and Child Counseling, a School Counseling Credential. He represented youth in juvenile justice court prior to doing dependency work and worked for several years with children as a substitute teacher and sports coach.

be enforceable only if the judge who grants the adoption petition finds that the agreement was made voluntarily and that the plans detailed therein are in the best interests of the to-be-adopted child.

While PACAs are legal documents, enforcement is limited. The court can review refusals to follow the agreement and make orders to enforce it, but a child's adoption will not be undone even if the terms of the agreement are not followed. Additionally, monetary penalties against the adoptive parent(s) are discouraged. Also, California law requires that parties attempt to mediate problems with existing agreements before the court intervenes.

A. History of PACAs and Their Use in Juvenile Dependency Court.

An understanding of the evolution of postadoption contact statutes is critical to understand their intended role in Dependency Court. Family Code (hereinafter FC) section 8616.5 governs postadoption contact agreements. Welfare & Institutions Code (hereinafter W&I) section 366.26(a) explicitly makes PACAs applicable and available to the Juvenile Court, stating in its first paragraph that "(s)ection 8616.5 of the Family Code is applicable and available to all dependent children meeting the requirements of that section, if the PACA has been entered into voluntarily." The original postadoption agreement statute was...