【CASE INFORAMTION】
　　Plaintiff: Zhou Lan, female, 42 years old
　　Defendant: Zhao Jin, male, 48 years old
　　Co-defendant: Zhao Xiang, 43 year old

　　 The defendants are siblings. The plaintiff is a cousin of the defendants, i.e. her father is the brother of the defendants’ mother. Before the foundation of the People’s Republic of China, the defendants’ father was a businessman and led an affluent life who often supported his brother financially. Later, he brought his niece, the plaintiff, to the city and had her live with him and his wife. He also sent her to school. He supported her until she had a job. In 1972, the defendants’ parents both passed away. In 1984, the government returned the family items taken away from them during the Culture Revolution along with 80,000RMB balance in the bank. Zhou Lan, the plaintiff, got to know about this and believed she would be one of the heirs to these items and money. She filed a law suit at the court demanding to share them with the two defendants.
　　 The court found: After the plaintiff worked and moved out of Zhou’s house, she kept visiting and taking care of the defendants’ parents. Even during the Culture Revolution when the father was mistreated, the plaintiff never cut off her relationship with the defendants’ parents. However, the plaintiff kept the parental relationship with her biological parents who lived in the country. She called the defendants’ parents uncle and aunt. She had never been officially adopted. Based on the findings, the court turned down the plaintiff’s claim.
　　 【QUESTION】
　　 What is the difference between relationships of foster care and adoption?
　　 What are the legal issues in consideration?
　　 【BRIEF ANALYSIS】
　　 In the legal practice, foster care and adoption are sometimes difficult to distinguish. But they are different. The main differences are: Adoption relationship is established through certain procedures and both parties should be qualified. Through adoption, a legal relationship is established between a child and a parent(s). Foster care, on the other hand, refers to a child being placed by the biological parents with another caretaker due to various reasons. There is not consensus of adoption among the three parties. Although the foster care provider and foster cared person may live together for an extended period of time, the relationship between them is still just a trusteeship. Therefore, no matter how long these two parties stay together, the child parent relationship will not be established. The biological parents can step in at anytime to claim their child back and terminate the trusteeship. To determine the relationship, we need to identify if there is legal procedure of adoption and if there is adoption de facto. The foster care provider and child recognize publicly a child-parent relationship. They refer to each other as father, mother, son or daughter. The child in foster care has terminated the parental relationship with his or her biological parents. The child is a heir to his or her biological parents. And finally, we need to find out if there are any changes to the child’s personal information in the residential registration documents or personnel files. After these questions are answered, it might be not too difficult to distinguish a situation foster care from an adoption.