MOTHER’S APPEAL FOR HER CHILD

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 133, 26 August 1927, Page 16

MOTHER’S APPEAL FOR HER CHILD

PETITION TO PARLIAMENT (THE SUN’S Parliamentary Reporter.) WELLINGTON, Thursday. The right of a mother to regain possession of a child in respect of whom she had signed an adoption order was raised in a petition which was presented to Parliament to-day by Gladys Martha Dowse, of Wellington. The mother says that while in illhealth and in distresesd circumstances she placed her youngest child with some friends and subsequently under a misapprehension signed an adoption order. She is now able to maintain her child, of whom she says she is passionately fond, but two applications to the courts to have the order annulled have been unsuccessful. She now asks Parliament to amend the Infants Act. 1908, to make it mandatory for magistrates to annul such orders where it is established they were signed under a misapprehension and that the onus of proving that the parent was fully seized with the nature and effect of his or her act in signing the order be placed on the persons in possession of the child concerned.