X and Y adoption order setting aside: Supreme Court rules no power exists to revoke valid adoption orders

The UK Supreme Court has unanimously dismissed an appeal seeking revocation of adoption orders under the High Court's parens patriae jurisdiction, confirming that no such power exists outside the statutory scheme in the Adoption and Children Act 2002 ("ACA 2002"). The judgement in Re X and Y (Children: Adoption Order: Setting Aside) [2026] UKSC 13, handed down on 22 April 2026, resolves a question that has divided first instance courts for over a decade.

X and Y were placed for adoption with AM in 2012 and formally adopted in May 2013. By 2021, both had left AM's home and returned to live with their natural mother, BM. In April 2023, AM applied to the High Court to revoke the adoption orders under the inherent jurisdiction, with the support of both children and BM, on the basis that the existing legal arrangements created a "legal fiction" wholly at odds with their lived reality and — in Y's case — their sense of identity.

Lieven J refused the application, holding that although she accepted a limited category of case might engage such a jurisdiction, it could not be exercised purely on welfare grounds. The Court of Appeal dismissed AM's subsequent appeal. AM then appealed to the Supreme Court.

Lords Reed and Sales, Lord Stephens, Lady Simler, and Lord Doherty agreed that the parens patriae jurisdiction has never extended to extinguishing and transferring parental responsibility. Until the Adoption of Children Act 1926, no such power existed at all — it was entirely a creature of statute from the outset. The inherent jurisdiction cannot supply a remedy that Parliament has deliberately declined to create.

The Court traced the legislative history in detail. Both the 1921 Hopkinson Report and the 1925 Tomlin Report had been considered by Parliament when enacting the 1926 Act. Critically, the Tomlin Committee concluded that "the notion of revocation is inconsistent with the notion of adoption" — and Parliament followed that view. Every subsequent adoption statute, through to the ACA 2002, has maintained that position, subject only to the narrow legitimation exception in section 55.

The judgement identifies three independent reasons why no parens patriae power can apply. First, such powers have never historically been concerned with reordering parental responsibility by extinguishing and transferring it between parents. Second, where those powers do survive for children, they operate as a protective jurisdiction to guard against significant harm where no statutory mechanism is available — not to correct Parliament's deliberate policy choice. Third, the ACA 2002 occupies the field entirely: any exercise of inherent jurisdiction to revoke a valid adoption order would directly circumvent the statutory scheme.

The Court also dismissed the suggestion, raised obiter by the Court of Appeal, that some residual scope for revocation might survive in extreme cases involving human rights compliance. Section 6 of the Human Rights Act 1998 is prohibitory, not enabling: it cannot extend a jurisdiction that does not otherwise exist. The Court noted that the wide range of orders available under the Children Act 1989 — including re-adoption — provides ample means to protect adopted children without resort to revocation.

The position of an adopted child in law mirrors that of a natural child: parental responsibility can be extinguished only by a subsequent adoption order. The judgement confirms that parity of treatment has been a foundational principle of adoption legislation since 1926, and that any change is a matter for Parliament rather than the courts.