## Facts

- Corina Vela, a 19-year-old unmarried woman with family support, sought pregnancy counseling and adoption services from Marywood, a licensed Texas child-placing agency.
- Vela consistently requested an “open adoption” that would allow continued contact with her child after adoption.
- Marywood proposed a “sharing plan” under which adoptive parents would allow visits and communication, but Marywood knew such arrangements were not legally enforceable and did not tell Vela.
- After Vela gave birth in April 1998, Marywood placed the child in foster care and met with Vela and her parents.
- At that meeting, Vela was first shown an “Affidavit of Voluntary Relinquishment of Parental Rights,” had not previously reviewed it, was crying, and was uncertain whether to sign.
- Marywood’s counselor emphasized the sharing plan and reassured Vela, in substance, that she would remain in the child’s life, without disclosing that signing the affidavit would eliminate any legal right to contact.
- Vela was not told she could postpone signing, consult counsel, or that the sharing plan created no enforceable rights.
- Vela signed the affidavit shortly after it was presented.
- Within days, Vela attempted to revoke her relinquishment; Marywood told her it was irrevocable.
- Relying solely on the affidavit, the trial court terminated Vela’s parental rights and appointed Marywood managing conservator before Vela could intervene.

## Issues

1. Whether the evidence was legally sufficient to support a finding that Vela knowingly and voluntarily executed the relinquishment affidavit under Texas Family Code § 161.211, given Marywood’s representations and omissions concerning post-adoption contact and the legal consequences of relinquishment.
2. If the affidavit were valid, whether termination was in the child’s best interest.

## Decision

- The court of appeals reversed the termination judgment.
- The evidence was legally insufficient to establish that Vela’s affidavit was executed knowingly and voluntarily; the affidavit was void as a matter of law.
- Because the termination order depended solely on the defective affidavit, the court did not reach the best-interest issue.

## Legal Principles

- An affidavit of voluntary relinquishment supports termination only if executed knowingly and voluntarily under Texas Family Code § 161.211.
- Where a licensed child-placing agency provides counseling to an expectant mother, the relationship can impose a duty of full and fair disclosure about the legal consequences of relinquishment and the nonenforceability of promised post-adoption contact.
- A relinquishment is not voluntary when induced by misrepresentation, fraud, or overreaching that prevents the parent from understanding that signing extinguishes legal rights, including any right to future contact.
- If the sole statutory ground for termination is a relinquishment affidavit that is void, the termination judgment cannot stand.

## Conclusion

The court set aside the termination because the adoption agency’s counseling and assurances about continued contact, coupled with nondisclosure that such contact was not legally enforceable and that relinquishment would eliminate legal rights, rendered the relinquishment affidavit not knowingly and voluntarily executed under Texas law.


Vela v. Marywood, 17 S.W.3d 750 (Tex. App.—Austin 2000, pet. denied)