Rule 3.800.Applicable Rules; Interested Parties; Indian Child

MCR 3.800 is the doorway rule for the adoption subchapter. It answers two questions that every other rule in this subchapter depends on: which body of procedure governs an adoption file, and who has to be treated as a party in it. The second question drives everything about notice, so the list in subrule (B) is worth reading before any petition goes out.

The rest of the court rules still apply

Subrule (A) states the default. Adoption proceedings are governed by the Michigan Court Rules except as modified by the rules in this chapter. The rules in this chapter control wherever they speak, and the general rules fill in wherever they do not. Nothing about an adoption file puts it outside ordinary civil procedure; the chapter's rules only carve out the places where adoption needs different handling.

Who is an interested party

Subrule (B)(1) does not write its own list. It adopts the persons interested identified by MCL 710.24a, except as otherwise provided in subrules (B)(2) and (B)(3). So the general answer to who is interested comes from the statute, and the rule supplies only the two variations that follow.

Indian children add parties

Subrule (B)(2) applies whenever the court knows or has reason to know the adoptee is an Indian child. The trigger is knowledge or reason to know, not a formal finding, and it operates in addition to subrule (B)(1) rather than in place of it. The added interested persons are:

• the Indian child's tribe;
• the Indian custodian, if any; and
• the Secretary of the Interior, if the Indian child's parent or Indian custodian, or the tribe, is unknown.

The Secretary of the Interior joins that list on a condition: the Indian child's parent or Indian custodian, or the tribe, is unknown. A gap in any one of those is enough, and the Secretary is added to the other interested persons rather than substituted for them. If the tribe is known but the parent is not, the tribe and the Secretary are both interested persons.

A shorter list for noncustodial parent terminations

Subrule (B)(3) narrows the field for one specific petition: a petition to terminate the rights of the noncustodial parent under MCL 710.51(6). There, the interested persons are the petitioner, the adoptee if over 14 years of age, the noncustodial parent, and the same Indian child additions described above if the court knows or has reason to know the adoptee is an Indian child.

Two points matter about that list. It is shorter than the general MCL 710.24a list, which fits a proceeding aimed at one parent rather than at the placement as a whole. And the adoptee is a party only above the age of 14, so the child's own status in the case turns on age.