Contact Veto Law & Legal Definition

Contact Veto, a term associated with adoption, denotes that “a certain party has the right to prevent being contacted unilaterally.” An adoption is a legal procedure whereby the adopted child and its adopted parents are legally entering into a parent child relationship with the same rights and privileges as a biological parent child relationship. As such, biological parents of adopted children have virtually no rights to children they have given up for adoption. However, adoptees who reach adulthood and desire to seek out their biological parents can do so without any restrictions other than the ability or inability to find information about one’s biological parents. In addition, State adoption registries facilitate such reunions and allow adoptees to access medical histories of consenting biological parents. On the other hand, a person can prevent contact from his/her birth parent/ birth child altogether by registering a contact veto. However, the registering does not prevent the release of identifying information about the registering party. When a person applies for identifying information about his/her birth parent/birth child, who has registered a contact veto, the person who seeks identifying information will be asked to agree in writing not to contact the identified person. If the applicant is unwilling to agree, identifying information will not be released.