Fam. Code, § 8603 · Chapter 1. General Provisions
Fam. Code, § 8603
Text — As published in the Legislative Counsel's database, tables dated October 18, 2026 (pubinfo_2025.zip)
(a) A married person, not lawfully separated from the person’s spouse, shall not adopt a child without the consent of the spouse, provided that the spouse is capable of giving that consent.
(b) The consent of the spouse shall not establish any parental rights or responsibilities on the part of the consenting spouse unless that person has consented to adopt the child in a writing filed with the court and is named in the final decree as an adoptive parent. The court shall not name the consenting spouse as an adoptive parent in the final decree unless the consenting spouse has filed a written consent to adopt the child with the court and has an approved adoption home study.
(c) The court may dispense with the consent of a spouse who cannot be located after diligent search, or a spouse determined by the court to lack the capacity to consent. A spouse for whom consent was dispensed shall not be named as an adoptive parent in the final decree.
Notes and commentary — not statutory text
History
Amended by Stats. 2019, Ch. 115, Sec. 111. (AB 1817) Effective January 1, 2020.
Source of truth
- Edition
- As published in the Legislative Counsel's database, tables dated October 18, 2026 (pubinfo_2025.zip)
- Official file
- https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=FAM§ionNum=8603.
- Text hash
- sha256 35998f5ab95e544b5d33fbe49086172c4c5bbea22f801f517604591e1e3706f8
- Composed by
- compose_ca.py 2026-10-22: the Legislative Counsel's CAML content files read by a tokenizer (caml_readers.reader_a); an independent xml.etree reading (caml_readers.reader_b) agrees on every section
Procedural information only. Not legal advice and not a substitute for the advice of an attorney. Confirm the current text with the official publisher before relying on it.