15A V.S.A. § 301

This is the official text of 15A V.S.A. § 301, part of Vermont’s V.S.A — part of the compiled statutory law of Vermont, published by the state as "V.S.A." Browse the sections below, each linked to its official government source.

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§ 3-301. Standing to petition to adopt

Official statutory text

(a) Except as otherwise provided in subsection (c) of this section, the only persons who have standing to petition to adopt a minor under this article are:

(1) a person with whom a minor has been placed for adoption or who has been selected as a prospective adoptive parent by a person authorized under this title to place the minor for adoption; or

(2) a person with whom a minor has not been placed for adoption or who has not been selected or rejected as a prospective adoptive parent pursuant to Article 2, Part 1 and Part 2 of this title, but who has had physical custody of the minor for at least six months immediately before seeking to file a petition for adoption and is allowed to file the petition by the court for good cause shown.

(b) The spouse of a petitioner shall consent to the petition unless judicially declared incompetent.

(c) A petition for adoption of a minor stepchild by a stepparent may be filed under Article 4 of this title and a petition for adoption of an emancipated minor may be filed under Article 5 of this title.

Status: in_force · Read it on the official government site

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About this page: Statute text is reproduced from official government publishers via the Open US Law dataset (Vaquill AI, snapshot v2026.08, CC BY 4.0). Primary legislative text like this is public domain under the government-edicts doctrine (Georgia v. Public.Resource.Org, 2020). We link every section back to its official source so you can verify it independently.