The Court of Appeals upheld a refusal to overturn a grandparent adoption for fraud in Castillo v. Bell, unpub. 11/14/17. The mother was served by publication, but learned of the adoption in the same year that it happened, 2010. She filed to overturn it in 2016. Code § 63.2-1216 prohibits ANY attack on an adoption judgment more than six months after it is made, for any reason, including fraud; but the Court had found it unconstitutional as applied to a non-English-speaking mother in an egregious fraud case, F.E. v. G.F.M., 35 Va. App. 648, 547 S.E.2d 531 (2001) (en banc). But in this case the trial court had found no evidence of fraud, and that the grandmother had done nothing to prevent her from learning of the adoption, and the mother had not appealed those findings.
The mother's appeal was also procedurally defaulted. Simply endorsing as “seen and objected to” does not preserve issues for appeal EXCEPT when ‘the ruling made by the trial court was narrow enough to make obvious the basis of appellant’s objection,’” the Court writes, quoting Herring v. Herring, 33 Va. App. 281, 286, 532 S.E.2d 923, 927 (2000) (quoting Mackie v. Hill, 16 Va. App. 229, 231, 429 S.E.2d 37, 38 (1993)). As for other means of preserving issues,
Castillo endorsed the final order as “Seen and objected to” without further explanation. She did not file any post-trial motions. The written statement of facts does not include the parties’ closing arguments or objections to the trial court’s ruling.