The Supreme Court of New Jersey’s recent decision in New Jersey Division of Youth and Family Services v. L.L., provides a good opportunity to review New Jersey’s Kinship Legal Guardianship Act. The Act is designed to address the needs of children and caregivers in long-term “kinship” relationships, placing those children who cannot safely reside with their parents in the care of a relative or family friend. This placement option avoids the need to terminate parental rights where adoption is either unlikely or not possible. 

The Act defines a “kinship legal guardian” as a “caregiver who is willing to assume care of a child due to parental incapacity, with the intent to raise the child to adulthood, and who is appointed the kinship legal guardian of the child by the court[.]" From a legal rights standpoint, the guardian has the same “rights, responsibilities and authority relating to the child as a birth parent,” subject to various limitations set forth in the Act. By that same token, the birth parent can consent to an adoption or name change, must continue to pay child support, and can still have parenting time with the child as determined by the Court. As parental rights are not terminated, the Act logically provides that the child does not lose rights derived from the parents, such as rights of inheritance, benefits, etc.Continue Reading Supreme Court Rules on New Jersey’s Kinship Legal Guardianship Act