What does records retroactively sealed mean?

Question

With/For adoption records & all adoption related things.

Answer 1

Heather is correct.  If a child is relinquished but not adopted, the records never seal.  If the child is adopted but the adoption fails, the records reopen.

Sometimes in a states legal code, you will see that records were "retroactively sealed."  To explain what this means, I'll give you a little background and then an example.  

At one time, no birth records were sealed, whether someone was adopted or not.  Birth records did not start being sealed from the adopted person until after World War 2.  Prior to that, some states sealed them from people other than the adoptee.  Two states, Alaska and Kansas, have never sealed  birth records from adoptees.  Currently, six states allow adult adopted citizens to access their own birth records.  Of course Alaska and Kansas are two of them.  The other four are Oregon, Alabama, New Hampshire and Maine.  In Maine, the records will be available starting 1/2009.

Now for the example.  Nevada did not seal birth records from adoptees until 1973.  But, when they sealed the records, it was not only the records from 1973 on that sealed, it was the records prior to 1973 as well.  Because the records that were in existence prior to passage of a sealed records law were sealed as well, this means the records were "sealed retroactively."

Unfortunately, this affected first parents who were told their children could be given their original birth records when they reached 18 years of age.  What they were told was correct under the law.  They were not being told something that was legally not true.  I know a couple of Nevada adoptees who are now reunited.  Their first parents were shocked and hurt to find that the law they were correctly quoted had changed.

These are the first parents who were promised something that actually existed under the law, but had the law changed on them.  Since "birthparent confidentiality" does not and cannot exist under the law (as proven by adoption law itself,) re-opening birth records doesn't break a real and legal "promise" to first parents.  Retroactive sealing, however did.  No one cared.

Answer 2

They are not sealed at birth.  Only when the adoption is finalized.

If the adoption falls through, they are opened again

(ps.  Alisa this is why birthparent privacy is a myth)