Washington State Consent to Adoption Form: Signing, Revoking, and Filing

A Washington State consent to adoption form is the signed, sworn document a birth parent, an adoptee aged fourteen or older, an agency, or a guardian uses to voluntarily give up parental rights so an adoption can be finalized. To be valid, it must contain the specific disclosures listed in RCW 26.33.160, be signed under penalty of perjury before an authorized witness, and sit for at least 48 hours before it goes to a Superior Court judge. Until the judge approves it, you can take it back.

What the Form Must Say

RCW 26.33.160(4) spells out the statements a written consent has to include. Leave any of them out and the document may not hold up. The consent must state that:¹

The consent is given subject to court approval and has no legal effect until the court approves it.
The birth parent either is or is not of Native American or Alaska Native descent.
The consent will not be presented to the court until at least 48 hours after signing or 48 hours after the child’s birth, whichever is later.
The consent is revocable at any time before the court approves it, with an explanation of how to revoke.
Once the court approves the consent, it cannot be revoked except on narrow grounds of fraud, duress, or mental incompetency, and only within one year.
The person signing has the right to an attorney, appointed at public expense if they cannot afford one.
The person signing has the right to a pre-consent counseling session with someone other than the party seeking consent, also at public expense if needed.
The address of the clerk of court where the consent will be filed is on the form.

Along with these statutory disclosures, the form identifies the child by name and date of birth, the person giving consent, and the agency or individuals receiving consent.

Who Has to Sign

Washington requires consent from four categories of people when they exist in the case:

Any adoptee who is fourteen or older must personally consent.
Both legal parents and anyone identified as a possible biological parent of a child under eighteen must consent.
If the child was previously relinquished to a licensed agency or the Department of Children, Youth, and Families (DCYF) under RCW 26.33.080, that entity’s consent takes the place of the birth parents’ consent.
If a court has appointed a guardian for the child, the guardian must also consent.

RCW 26.33.170 lists situations where consent is not required, such as when a parent has been found unfit or has abandoned the child. If parental rights have already been terminated by court order, no consent from that parent is needed.

Where the Form Comes From

Washington does not publish a standardized consent form for the public. The Washington State Courts website states that adoption forms are not available through its system, and DCYF provides general information but does not supply forms or legal advice.² In practice an attorney drafts the document, usually the adoptive family’s attorney, the agency’s counsel, or an attorney appointed for the birth parent. If you cannot afford one, the court is required to appoint an attorney at public expense.¹

How to Sign It

The consent is signed under penalty of perjury. Your signature must be made before a person authorized to administer oaths, such as a notary public, or before a representative of DCYF or a licensed child-placing agency.³ If you are in the military, a commissioned officer can serve as the witness.

The 48-Hour Rule

You can sign the consent at any time, but it cannot go to the judge until 48 hours after you sign or 48 hours after the child’s birth, whichever comes later.¹ A birth parent who signs the day after delivery still gets a built-in cooling-off window before the court can act. If the parent instead files a petition for relinquishment to an agency or DCYF under RCW 26.33.080, the petition and consent may be filed before the birth, but neither can be signed until after the child is born.⁴

How to Revoke the Consent

Washington gives you two different windows for taking the consent back, and the standard changes once the court has approved it.

Before the Court Approves It

Up to the moment of court approval, your consent is freely revocable. You revoke by delivering or mailing a written revocation to the clerk of the court where the consent was filed. No reason is required.¹

There is one narrow extension tied to very early revocations. If you gave notice of revocation, oral or written, to the agency or person who sought the consent within 48 hours after the child’s birth, you can still mail a written revocation to the court within 48 hours of that initial notice even if the court has already approved the consent in the meantime. This matters most when things move fast after a newborn placement.

After the Court Approves It

Once the judge approves the consent, undoing it is much harder. Within one year of approval, a parent can challenge the consent only by proving fraud or duress by the person or agency that requested it, or by proving the parent lacked mental competency when signing. After one year, the consent is permanently irrevocable. DCYF describes this as a hard cutoff, with the fraud-or-duress exception running for just twelve months.⁵

Stricter Rules for Indian Children

When the child is or may be an “Indian child” under the federal Indian Child Welfare Act, meaning a member of or eligible for membership in a federally recognized tribe, significantly stronger rules apply. The consent cannot be signed until at least ten days after the child’s birth, replacing the standard 48-hour window.⁴ The consent must be recorded before a court of competent jurisdiction, with the judge certifying that the parent fully understood the consequences, a requirement drawn from 25 U.S.C. § 1913(a).⁶

Revocation rights are also broader. A parent of an Indian child can withdraw consent for any reason at any time before the final adoption decree, not just before court approval of the consent. Even after a final decree, the parent can petition to vacate it for fraud or duress for up to two years, compared to one year under the standard rule.¹ Because of these protections, the ancestry disclosure on the consent form is not a formality. Omitting it or getting it wrong can unravel the entire adoption later.

Filing and What the Court Does With It

Once the consent is signed and the 48-hour presentation period has passed, it is filed with the clerk of the Superior Court in the county where the adoption petition is pending. The adoption filing fee in Washington is $310, the same across counties.⁷⁸

The consent is one piece of a larger case. The adoptive parents or agency file an adoption petition, and the court requires a preplacement report evaluating the proposed adoptive home before finalizing anything. When the paperwork is in order, the court schedules an adoption hearing where the adopting parent typically answers questions under oath confirming the details in the petition. If the judge is satisfied that the consent is valid and the adoption serves the child’s best interests, the court enters a decree of adoption, the order that permanently transfers parental rights to the adoptive family.

1
Washington State Legislature. Washington Code 26.33.160 – Consent to Adoption, When Revocable, Procedure
2
Washington State Courts. Adoption
3
Washington State Legislature. RCW 26.33.160 – Consent to Adoption, When Revocable, Procedure
4
Washington State Legislature. RCW 26.33.080 – Petition for Relinquishment
5
Washington State Department of Children, Youth, and Families. Laws and Requirements
6
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 25 USC 1913 – Parental Rights, Voluntary Termination
7
King County. Superior Court and Clerk’s Fee Schedule
8
Spokane County, WA. Fee Schedule