Harvey Adoption Case

Opinion by

Mr. Chief Justice Horace Stern,

Proceedings for the adoption of a child must be carefully differentiated from those involving merely a question of its custody; they are of far greater import and involve more serious consequences. Custody may be awarded for a more or less temporary duration, but a decree of adoption terminates forever all relations between the child and its natural parents, *4severs it entirely from its own family tree and engrafts it upon that of its new parentage: Schwab Adoption Case, 355 Pa. 534, 536, 50 A. 2d 504, 505. For all purposes, legal and practical, the…