A divided Puerto Rico Supreme Court has ruled that, under specific circumstances, a child may keep a legal bond with a biological parent even after being adopted by a single adoptive parent. The decision, issued as 2026 TSPR 100 and authored by Associate Justice Erick V. Kolthoff Caraballo, marks a significant shift in how adoption law is interpreted and has already prompted strong concurring and dissenting opinions within the court.
The case involves a young girl whose mother died in a car accident eight months after giving birth. The child’s grandmother then adopted her without notifying the biological father, who had not yet legally recognized the child and therefore did not hold patria potestad (parental authority). Less than 30 days after the adoption decree, the father filed a filiation action and was judicially recognized as the child’s parent.
He later sought to establish paternofilial relations, which the trial court granted. The grandmother appealed, the Court of Appeals affirmed, and the matter reached the Supreme Court. The majority explained that the Civil Code of 2020 generally provides that adoption extinguishes all legal ties between an adopted child and the biological family.
However, Article 588 creates an exception when a child with a single filiation is adopted by one person who is not the biological parent. The court found this exception applies squarely here: the child had only one legal filiation at the time of adoption and the adoptive mother acted alone. Because the father’s filiation had not yet been established, his later recognition did not extinguish his parental rights.