Married couple from the Mayen-Koblenz district are not allowed to adopt refugees

Germans are only allowed to adopt an adult refugee if their identity has been clarified. According to a judgment of the BGH, it must also be "morally justified".

When adopting an adult refugee, there must be a close personal relationship like that between parents and their child, demanded the Federal Court of Justice in Karlsruhe in a decision published on Wednesday.

The specific case concerned an Afghan refugee who entered Germany via the Balkan route in 2016 without a passport and applied for asylum. At first he stated that he had just come of age. His birth parents are dead. A German couple from the Mayen-Koblenz district took the young man into their household.

OLG Koblenz and BGH show the limits of adoption

In the asylum procedure, the refugee later changed his date and place of birth. After his asylum application was rejected, the couple from the Mayen-Koblenz district applied for the refugee to be adopted. The Higher Regional Court (OLG) Koblenz rejected this.

The BGH confirmed this decision. For an adoption, the identity must be clarified. The refugee was able to prove this by presenting a passport that was issued later. However, there is a lack of the "moral justification" required by law when adopting an adult. This should be assumed in the case of an existing or at least expected "parent-child relationship" in the future.

There has to be a "social family bond"

However, this cannot be assumed in the event of a dispute. There are language difficulties between the refugee and the German couple from the Mayen-Koblenz district. In addition, the young man has only been living in their household for two years. The fact that the application for adoption was made immediately after the negative asylum decision was made indicates that the refugee should only be protected from deportation. The applicant couple did not prove a "social family bond".

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