Is It Legal to Rehome an Adopted Child in Washington?

The word "rehoming" was borrowed from pet adoption forums, and that origin says everything about the practice: families quietly handing an adopted child to strangers found online, with a notarized letter in place of a court order. Washington has now outlawed it directly. The Law Office of Chad Foster helps Snohomish County clients with child custody, support, and parentage matters.

No. Transferring custody of a child to another person outside the legal system, with the intent to abandon your parental rights and responsibilities, is a crime in Washington. Under RCW 26.38.110, part of the chapter enacted in 2022 to stop unregulated custody transfers, that kind of rehoming is a gross misdemeanor, and the prohibition reaches intermediaries and receiving households too. The law leaves untouched the informal, temporary caregiving families have always used, a child staying with grandparents, a trusted relative stepping in during a hard season, and it preserves every legitimate legal channel for changing a child's custody. Here is where the line sits and what struggling adoptive families can lawfully do.

What the Rehoming Law Prohibits

Chapter 26.38 RCW targets a specific act: a parent, guardian, or person with custody of a child for adoptive placement transferring custody to another person with the intent, at the time of transfer, to abandon their rights and responsibilities concerning the child, outside of any authorized legal process. That is the essence of rehoming, a permanent handoff with no court, no agency, no home study, no background check, and no one accountable for whether the child landed somewhere safe. For related guidance, see Can My Child Keep Contact With Siblings Adopted by Another Family.

The statute closes the loopholes that let the practice flourish online. Intermediaries, the people and forums that facilitate transfers, whether or not for pay, face liability, as do people who receive custody knowing, or when they reasonably should know, of a violation, unless, as soon as practicable after the transfer, they notify the Department of Children, Youth, and Families or law enforcement, or take appropriate action to establish custody through legitimate channels. Chapter 26.38 RCW also prohibits advertising a child for custody transfer, with violations enforceable under the consumer protection act. The offense itself is a gross misdemeanor, and depending on the facts, conduct around a rehoming can implicate other criminal statutes, including abandonment and custodial interference laws. For related guidance, see Can I Adopt a Relative's Child.

Why did this need its own chapter? Because investigative reporting exposed a genuine underground: adopted children, often adopted internationally with significant trauma and disabilities, passed to strangers recruited in online groups, sometimes into abusive or exploitative homes, with paperwork as thin as a power of attorney form. The 2022 law, based on a uniform act, was Washington's answer.

What the Law Does Not Prohibit

The legislature was careful not to criminalize ordinary family life. Under RCW 26.38.100, the prohibition does not apply to placements with the child's other parent or a stepparent, with relatives by blood or law, with an adult who has had a close relationship with the child for a substantial period and whom the parent reasonably believes is fit, with an Indian custodian or member of the child's tribal family unit, or through a parent's power of attorney delegating parental powers under RCW 11.130.145, which is limited to 24 months. Sending your child to live with their grandmother for a school year is not rehoming. Neither is a deployment-driven power of attorney to your sister.

The line is intent plus process. Temporary caregiving among trusted people, with the parent still holding their role, is lawful. A permanent transfer meant to shed parenthood is lawful only through the legal system: a court-ordered custody or guardianship proceeding, a dependency process, a licensed child-placing agency, a tribal court, or, for newborns, Washington's safe surrender law. Those channels exist precisely so that someone with authority checks where the child is going.

For Adoptive Families in Crisis

The rehoming law is aimed at a black market, not at struggling parents, but it lands hardest on adoptive families at the end of their rope, because they are the ones the black market recruited. So it matters to say clearly what the lawful options are. An adoption in crisis does not reduce your legal obligations: as explained in can an adoption be reversed after the decree is signed, the decree makes you the child's parents with full permanence, and walking away is not a legal category.

What exists instead: post-adoption support services and adoption-competent mental health care, including intensive treatment options for children with severe trauma or behavioral needs, of the kind described in can I put my teen into treatment in Washington if they refuse to go; respite care through kinship and community networks, which the exceptions in RCW 26.38.100 fully allow; formal guardianship or minor guardianship proceedings when a relative or close adult is genuinely better positioned to raise the child, done through court with everyone's eyes open; a subsequent adoption, lawfully processed through an agency or the court, when a new permanent family is truly the right answer; and, in the most serious breakdowns, the state's dependency system, which exists for families beyond their capacity, not as a punishment for them.

Every one of those paths keeps a judge, an agency, or both between the child and the next household. That is the entire point of the statute.

If You Are on the Receiving End

The statute's reach extends to the household that takes the child in, and people land there with good intentions: a family friend agrees to take a struggling adoptee "for now," and months later realizes the arrangement was meant to be forever. The law gives that household a clear path out of jeopardy: as soon as practicable, notify the Department of Children, Youth, and Families or law enforcement, or take appropriate action to establish custody through legitimate legal channels, typically a minor guardianship petition, which puts a judge over the arrangement and converts an unlawful transfer into a supervised one. What a receiving family should not do is operate indefinitely on a notarized letter, enroll the child in school with improvised paperwork, and hope the situation regularizes itself. Schools, doctors, and eventually courts all ask the same question, who has legal authority over this child, and the family without an answer has both a practical problem and, under chapter 26.38 RCW, a potential criminal one. The guardianship route answers the question properly and protects everyone, the child first.

Get Real Help Before Making a Permanent Mistake

If your adoptive family is in crisis, or a relative's informal arrangement needs to become a legal one, the difference between a lawful transition and a gross misdemeanor is process, and process is navigable with help. The Law Office of Chad Foster advises Snohomish County families on guardianships, subsequent adoptions, and lawful custody transitions, and can connect a family in crisis with the right next step. Call 425.785.8679 before acting on anything you found in an online group.