Chapter IV
REGISTRATION OF CHILD ADOPTION
Article 15.- Application of child adoption customs and practices
1. The State encourages the promotion of ethnic groups practices of adopting kith and kin in the lines of descent, who are in difficult plights, and supportless orphans if the adoption fully meets the conditions prescribed by law.
2. People are mobilized to get rid of the practice of adopting children where the adopters are not twenty years or more older than the adoptees.
Article 16.- Child adoption registration
The commune-level People’s Committees of the localities where the adopters or the adoptees reside shall effect the child adoption registration.
In order to create favorable conditions for the involved parties, the child adoption registration shall be conducted at the offices of the commune-level People’s Committees or at the population groups in wards, villages, hamlets, where the adopters or the adoptees reside.
When making the child adoption registration, the adopters shall have to file the child adoption application and other regular papers. After receiving the complete valid dossiers, the commune-level People’s Committees shall verify the child adoption application; if all the law-prescribed conditions for child adoption are met, the child adoption registration shall be effected. After the deliverers and the receivers of adopted children sign their names into the child adoption registers and records on hand-over and reception of the adopted children, the presidents of the commune-level People’s Committees shall sign the decisions to recognize the child adoption. Each party shall be handed an original of the decision on recognition of the child adoption at the offices of the commune-level People’s Committees or the residence places of the adopters or the adoptees.
The child adoption registration for ethnic minority people in deep-lying or remote areas shall be exempt from fee.
Article 17.- Cases of child adoption before January 1, 2001 but without registration at competent State agencies
For cases of child adoption made before January 1, 2001, the effective date of the 2000 Marriage and Family Law, without registration at competent State agencies, where all conditions prescribed by law have, however, been met and the relationships between the adoptive parents and the adopted children have already been established and the parties have fully exercised their rights and fulfilled their obligations, they shall be recognized by law and encouraged and given favorable conditions by the State for child adoption registration. If disputes over the parent-child relationships between the adopters and the adoptees arise, the courts shall settle them.