Wis. Stat. § 48.81

This is the official text of Wis. Stat. § 48.81, part of Wisconsin’s Wisconsin Statutes — the complete compiled statutory law of Wisconsin, organized into numbered chapters by subject.

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Who may be adopted.

Official statutory text

Any child who is present in this state at the time the petition for adoption is filed may be adopted if any of the following criteria are met:

(1) Both of the child’s parents are deceased.

(2) The parental rights of both of the child’s parents with respect to the child have been terminated under subch. VIII or in another state or a foreign jurisdiction.

(3) The parental rights of one of the child’s parents with respect to the child have been terminated under subch. VIII or in another state or a foreign jurisdiction and the child’s other parent is deceased.

(4) The person filing the petition for adoption is the spouse of the child’s parent with whom the child and the child’s parent reside and either of the following applies:

(a) The child’s other parent is deceased.

(b) The parental rights of the child’s other parent with respect to the child have been terminated under subch. VIII or in another state or a foreign jurisdiction.

(5) Section 48.839 (3) (b) applies.

(6) The child is being adopted under s. 48.97 (3) .

History: 1987 a. 383 ; 1989 a. 161 ; 1997 a. 104 ; 2015 a. 380 .

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.