Published on 15 July 2024
FIRST SECTION
Application no. 31761/18
Agnieszka KURIANSKI
against Poland
lodged on 13 June 2018
communicated on 25 June 2024
SUBJECT MATTER OF THE CASE
The application concerns revocation of the applicant’s adoption on the request of her adoptive parents, forty years after the adoption.
The applicant was adopted in 1978 as a four-year-old child. She does not know her biological parents and lived with her adoptive parents until majority. In 2003 the applicant returned to live with her parents after the birth of her daughter and remained with them for ten years. The parents subsequently became dissatisfied with the applicant’s life choices and applied to revoke the adoption.
In December 2015 the Gliwice District Court dismissed the request. The court considered that such interference in the applicant’s family life was not justified by the facts of the case. It noted that the adoptive parents had been partly responsible for the disagreements with the applicant and, moreover, there had been allegations of sexual abuse by her adoptive father.
The parents appealed. The public prosecutor sought to uphold the judgment pointing to the consequences of severing the family ties between the applicant and her adoptive parents; especially since the applicant had a child of her own.
In February 2017 the Gliwice Regional Court overturned the impugned judgment and revoked the applicant’s adoption. The court held that the sexual abuse allegations had not been proven and that the irretrievable breakdown of the family relationship had been established since the applicant had remarried and had an adult daughter. The court noted that the interests of the granddaughter should also be considered. However, after she had moved out of the applicant’s parents’ household, she had not maintained contact with them.
The applicant lodged a cassation appeal pointing out that throughout the entire proceedings she had expressed her wish to maintain family ties with her parents and had confirmed her emotional attachment to them.
On 21 February 2018 the Supreme Court refused to entertain the cassation appeal.
The applicant complains under Article 8 of the Convention that the revocation of her adoption amounted to an interference with her private and family life. She claims that the interference was not justified and necessary for any reasons and that the Regional Court’s assessment had failed to take note of the domestic case-law of the Supreme Court.
QUESTION TO THE PARTIES
Has there been an interference with the applicant’s right to respect for her private and family life through the decision to revoke the adoption, within the meaning of Article 8 § 1 of the Convention? If so, was that interference in accordance with the law and necessary in terms of Article 8 § 2 (see Zaieţ v. Romania, no. 44958/05, 24 March 2015)?