While growing up in Japan, Sayuri Umeda did not realize her country had the world’s second highest adoption rate with over 80,000 adoptions per year. Perhaps, Umeda was unaware of this record because most of the people who get adopted in Japan are adults, even though there are many children in need of protection, which could potentially be helped through adoption. In fact, Japan allows adoption of an adult who is younger than the adoptive parent, which is often easier to effectuate than the adoption of a minor. Adult adoptions in Japan are also used to save on inheritance tax by increasing the number of children who will be heirs, ultimately allowing inheritance amounts to be reduced and further decrease taxes on these amounts. However, the Inheritance Tax Act limits the number of the deceased’s adopted children who can be used to calculate deductions. Specifically, if the deceased does not have a biological child, a deduction for up to two adopted children can be applied, and if the deceased has one biological child, a deduction for only one adopted child can be applied. On the other hand, if the adoption process was not specially designed to create a parent-child relationship, the number of adopted children for deduction purposes is not limited. In the United States, these adoption deduction standards are stricter, making the Japan adoption process quite different from what takes place in the United States and several other countries.
See Kelly Buchanan, Many Adoptions in Japan Are Not About Raising Children, Library of Congress, April 5, 2017.
Special thanks to Victor Salas (Reference Librarian, John Marshall Law School) for bringing this article to my attention.
