Adoption has many legal effects. It grants the adopted child the rights of a legitimate child in relation to his adoptive parents. It terminates the parental authority of the natural (biological) parents over the child. In the case of hereditary succession, the adopted child enjoys something that other legitimate children do not. Aside from being an heir of his adoptive parents, he also remains an heir of his natural parents and other blood relatives.

The Family Code of the Philippines sets forth the requirements and procedure for adoption. Generally, only minors may be adopted. The only exception is in the case of a parent who wishes to adopt an illegitimate child. In the second case, this is sort of an equalizer. While illegitimate children, as such, have a smaller hereditary share in the parent’s estate, by adopting the illegitimate child, he acquires the full hereditary rights of a legitimate child.

A friend who had her marriage annulled recently adopted a five-year-old boy. She recounts her travails over the entire adoption procedure. It was not cheap. The psychological tests cost hundreds of thousands of pesos. The procedure took more than a year. And this was an instance when the boy’s biological parents were very much willing to have their son adopted. It was a no-contest procedure.

It is perhaps the cost and the complex legal procedure that make many prospective adoptive parents turn to cheaper and more hassle-free means of adoption–falsifying birth certificates. There was a scandal a few years ago when a local hospital was named as a prime mover in these under-the-table adoptions. Abandoned babies could be had for a price. The hospital took care of all the paperwork. A couple could go home with an adopted infant with papers to prove that the child was their own in every sense of the word. The birth certificate reflected that the woman gave birth in the very hospital that issued the document.

This practice is even more prevalent in remote barrios where hospitals are few and there is only the local hilot (midwife but not in the same sense as a licensed professional midwife) to attend to the childbirth. Based on her statement alone, an unmarried mother never gave birth and a childless couple suddenly become parents. And, yes, this statement can be the basis for the issuance of a birth certificate.

In a way, this shady practice fills a hole in a bureaucracy that has been failing to function effectively. Abandoned infants find homes; childless couples find fulfillment. But what are the possible long-term consequences?

What happens when a child who all his life thought he was a natural child of his parents then suddenly finds out he is not?

Let’s illustrate. A and B, married for ten years, could not have a child. They went to XYZ hospital where, for a few thousand pesos, they could bring home a newly-born child with “complete papers”. They raised the child, C, lovingly as if he were truly their own.

A and B died, leaving C, a minor 16 years of age as the sole heir. Now come the brothers, sisters and other collateral relatives of both A and B, claiming that C could not inherit because he was a “status-less person.” Neither a natural child nor a legally-adopted child, C has no legal rights.

Then, there is the issue on the emotional and mental effect on C. Not only is he finding out for the first time that the parents he knew are not his real parents, he is likewide thrust into a legal storm which may possibly find him without means for subsistence.

Did A and B then do C a favor when they “purchased” him from XYZ hospital? Or did they commit a selfish act? Did they really provide for the child C or did they only gratify their own need? Mental and emotional trauma do not only apply to children adopted by wealthy parents. Every person seeks to find his own roots. Even the poorest man wants to know from where and from whom he came.