Virginia high court upholds Marine's disputed adoption of Afghan girl

The Virginia Supreme Court ruled that a U.S. Marine and his wife may keep an Afghan girl they adopted in 2020, reversing two lower-court decisions and likely ending a bitter, yearslong legal fight over parental rights and adoption finality. Four justices signed the majority opinion, while three justices issued a sharply worded dissent.

The court's majority, Justices D. Arthur Kelsey, Stephen R. McCullough, Teresa M. Chafin and Wesley G. Russell Jr., relied on a Virginia statute that bars challenges to adoptions after six months. The opinion says that rule "is designed to create permanency, so a child is not bounced from one home to another." The majority added that "the only way to undercut it is to argue that a parent's constitutional rights were violated."

The adoption had been granted by a Fluvanna County judge in 2020 while the child was then 7,000 miles away in Afghanistan, living with a family the Afghan government decided were her relatives. That ruling set off litigation in Virginia courts as the child's Afghan relatives contested the adoption, and two lower courts later described aspects of the adoption as so flawed they rendered it void from the moment it was issued.

The challengers argued the Virginia courts lacked authority over a foreign child and alleged the adoption orders were based on the adoptive father, Maj. Joshua Mast of the U.S. Marine Corps, "repeatedly misleading the judge." Multiple outlets reported that the Masts brought the child to the United States "in defiance of a U.S. government decision to reunite her with her Afghan family." An AP file photo shows Maj. Joshua Mast and his wife, Stephanie, arriving at Circuit Court in Charlottesville on March 30, 2023.

The three-justice dissent called the result "wrong," "cancerous" and "like a house built on a rotten foundation," reflecting deep divisions over how to weigh statutory finality against allegations of serious procedural or factual defects. The sources did not name the dissenting justices. Lawyers for the Afghan family said they were not yet prepared to comment, and an attorney for the Masts declined to speak, citing a circuit court order that bars discussion of case details.

Beyond the immediate custody result, the ruling touches on broad policy tensions in family law: the competing goals of ensuring adoptive permanency and protecting against adoptions obtained by fraud or significant procedural error. By enforcing a strict six-month finality bar while acknowledging only a narrow constitutional exception, the court emphasized stability for adopted children over later collateral challenges, a stance that will likely be cited in future disputes involving international or cross-border adoptions.

For policymakers and practitioners, the decision underscores the leverage of statutory time limits in domestic proceedings and may prompt calls for clearer federal guidance on international reunifications and judicial oversight. While the ruling likely closes this particular chapter in Virginia courts, it also raises longer-term questions about how states and federal authorities coordinate when adoptions intersect with international displacement and wartime evacuations. Reporters and advocates seeking further clarity will need the full Virginia Supreme Court opinion and underlying lower-court records to assess the factual record and any remaining legal pathways for the Afghan relatives.