Revision of 29 May 2026: the appellate judgment confronted with the 1976 law and the identity evidence

Full translation of the supplied 22-page party pleading. Its legal conclusions, criticism and requested relief belong to the plaintiff’s revision, prepared through advocate Nikolaj Petronijević. Physical source pages are identified below. Editorial comparison notes follow the source and are not part of the pleading.

Original revision · all 22 pages

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ADVOCATE NIKOLAJ PETRONIJEVIĆ

34000 Kragujevac, Nikole Pašića 18/3/1, Republic of Serbia · +381 69 15 92 601 · [email protected] · Registration no.: 57364190 · Tax identification no.: 112464491

TO THE BASIC COURT IN NOVI SAD, for the SUPREME COURT

Case numbers: Gž2 211/26; P2.1435/24

Plaintiff: Milan Petrović of Kragujevac, residing at Kraljevačkog bataljona 110, personal identification number (JMBG): 2806974800030, represented by Nikolaj Petronijević, advocate in Kragujevac, under the enclosed power of attorney dated 25 May 2026.

Defendant: CENTRE FOR SOCIAL WORK OF THE CITY OF NOVI SAD, Novi Sad, Zmaj Ognjena Vuka 13–17, registration no. 08154902.

Under Article 403 of the Civil Procedure Act (hereafter: “CPA”) and Article 208 of the Family Act (hereafter: “FA”), the plaintiff, dissatisfied with the judgment of the Court of Appeal in Novi Sad Gž2 211/26 of 22 April 2026, dismissing his appeal and upholding the judgment of the Basic Court in Novi Sad P2.1435/2024 of 9 February 2026, through an advocate acting as his representative pursuant to Article 85(6) CPA, files in due time this:

APPEAL ON POINTS OF LAW

on the grounds of:

• a substantial violation of civil procedure under Article 374(1) CPA, committed before the second-instance court in conjunction with Article 396(1) CPA;
• incorrect application of substantive law, namely Articles 2, 30, 31, 34, 35, 37, 38, 40, 41 and 42 of the 1976 Adoption Act of the Socialist Autonomous Province of Vojvodina (hereafter: “SAPVAA”), Article 8 of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, and Article 78 of the Constitution of the Republic of Serbia.

1. SUMMARY OF THE DECISIVE FACTS

This appeal on points of law does not concern an isolated challenge to an adoption act as a separate technical and administrative event. It challenges the judicial decision, or decisions, maintaining the legal consequences of the 1979 act by which a child born on 28 June 1974 as Milivoj Miletić was, on 21 June 1979, completely removed from his original identity, paternal line, blood relationships, inheritance position, legal connection with his own origins, and linguistic and family continuity.

The contested judgment of the Court of Appeal in Novi Sad did not answer the central question in this dispute:

On precisely what statutory basis was the full adoption of the minor Milivoj Miletić permissible on 21 June 1979, given that the case file does not show that fulfilment of the minimum statutory requirements for full adoption was established?

If the case falls under Article 30(1) SAPVAA of 1976, the following facts had to be established for the statutory minimum even to be fulfilled:

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• abandonment of the child;
• the date of abandonment;
• the start and course of the search for the parent;
• the specific search measures;
• expiry of the statutory period of six months;
• failure of that search before the date on which full adoption was established.

Those facts were not established.

If the case falls under Article 30(4) SAPVAA, the prior consent of the known and living mother, Cvita Miletić, was required for full adoption, and the court did not establish the date, course or specific search measures before 21 June 1979.

No such consent exists.

Her consent was replaced with that of the ad hoc guardian, Vera Radovanović, although the Court of Appeal identified no statutory provision permitting such substitution under the full-adoption regime. Article 42 SAPVAA does not refer to Article 5 of that Act, so the general rules on a guardian’s consent could not arbitrarily be transferred to full adoption.

Article 41 of the same Act expressly ties the nullity of full adoption to failure to fulfil the conditions in Article 30. The issue of Article 30 is therefore not peripheral. It is the central issue in the dispute.

Neither the first-instance nor the second-instance court answered these questions.

Instead of a legally logical answer grounded in the statute, the Court of Appeal answered with the phrase that the conditions “had in any event been fulfilled”. That is not an application of the law. It is avoidance of the application of the law.

The contested judgment then leaves without a real answer the fact that the plaintiff was adopted again by another married couple in 1984, although Article 40 SAPVAA provides that full adoption may not be dissolved: the court did not establish which act opened the way for a new adoption if the first was full and indissoluble.

If the 1979 full adoption was lawful and indissoluble, the new adoption of the same child in 1984 cannot be a legally neutral fact. The court had to explain which legal act opened the way in 1984 for another adoption of the same child. The second-instance court’s wording that the validity of the second adoption is not the subject of the proceedings does not answer that question.

The contested judgment completely disregards Vera Radovanović’s conflict of interest.

The same official participates in managing the case, recommends the adopters, appears as ad hoc guardian and consents to full adoption. That is neither protection of the child’s interests nor action in the child’s interest under Article 2 SAPVAA. The child’s interest is not a mere principle but a mandatory statutory condition that the guardianship authority actually had to establish. It could not use nominal fulfilment of that condition to close an institutional circle through the same official of the guardianship authority.

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The contested judgment also treats the paternal and inheritance trail of Pavle Lakatoš incorrectly.

In these proceedings the plaintiff does not seek a determination of paternity. He seeks examination of the lawfulness of the administrative formula “father unknown” at the time of full adoption.

The files P-1642/76, O.196/79 and Gž 11/80 show that a paternal, family, judicial and inheritance trail existed in the case files.

The Court of Appeal’s assertion that Pavle Lakatoš did not acknowledge paternity contradicts the divorce file P-1642/76, in which Pavle Lakatoš stated that he had a son with Cvita. That fact was also incorporated into the factual findings of the judgment in that case. “Paternity was not established by a separate status decision” is not the same as “Pavle did not acknowledge the child”: the contents of file P-1642/76 refute the latter assertion.

Finally, the Court of Appeal itself reproduced the contents of the full-adoption record identifying the adoptee’s mother, although Article 34 SAPVAA expressly provides that information about the adoptee’s parents is not to be entered in the record establishing full adoption.

It is particularly decisive that full adoption under SAPVAA was not an ordinary change in the child’s family placement. Article 35 provides for cancellation of the existing birth entry and a new entry identifying the adopters as parents. Article 37 provides for termination of rights and duties between the adoptee and his blood relatives. Article 38 prohibits determination of the paternity and maternity of a fully adopted child. Article 40 provides that full adoption may not be dissolved. Where that mechanism and the consequences of these provisions are applied to a child without the conditions of Article 30 first being lawfully established, without the prior consent of the known and living mother, with the paternal and inheritance trail suppressed, and with a subsequent second adoption of the same child, this is not a neutral family-law act. It is an objectively implemented legal mechanism permanently severing original identity, blood relationships, the paternal line, inheritance position and the legal route to establishing biological origins.

This reveals the actual function of the contested act: not protecting the child, but legally locking the child into a new administrative identity.

This appeal on points of law is therefore more than a remedy against an erroneous judgment: it places before the Supreme Court a record of all the contradictions and irregularities in the proceedings. If the Supreme Court fails to resolve and correct them, its decision becomes the next act in the chain of responsibility.

2. DECISIVE FACTS

The contested judgment of the Court of Appeal in Novi Sad is incorrect and unlawful.

Contrary to Article 396(1) CPA, the Court of Appeal did not assess the plaintiff’s essential grounds of appeal, although they directly concerned the very lawfulness of the full adoption of 21 June 1979. It thereby denied the plaintiff the right to a fair trial under Article 6 of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, since the right to a reasoned judicial decision is an integral part of Article 6.

Instead of genuinely reviewing lawfulness, the Court of Appeal:

• adopted in full the first-instance court’s conclusion that the adoption was lawful;
• subsequently introduced reasons absent from the first-instance judgment;

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• refused to determine in law whether the particular case falls under Article 30(1) or Article 30(4) SAPVAA;
• replaced the statutory conditions of Article 30 with the formula that they “had in any event been fulfilled”;
• disregarded the absence of the required six-month period and a specific search for the mother;
• accepted substitution of the known and living mother’s consent by that of an ad hoc guardian without clarifying the basis for such substitution;
• completely disregarded that Article 42 SAPVAA does not provide for application of Article 5 under the full-adoption regime;
• refused to assess the legal consequence of the fact that another married couple adopted the plaintiff again in 1984;
• completely disregarded Vera Radovanović’s conflict of interest;
• accepted the factually incorrect assertion that Pavle Lakatoš did not acknowledge paternity;
• reduced Pavle Lakatoš’s paternal trail and probate case O.196/79 to the formal assertion that paternity had not been judicially established;
• disregarded that, alongside the full-adoption proceedings, an active judicial and inheritance trail existed for the plaintiff as Milivoj Miletić in the probate proceedings following Pavle Lakatoš’s death;
• ignored the direct conflict between the contents of the full-adoption record and Article 34 SAPVAA;
• failed to assess the objective function and meaning of Articles 35, 37, 38 and 40 SAPVAA in this particular case.

The Court of Appeal thus failed to conduct a genuine, substantive judicial review of the lawfulness of the contested full adoption.

Instead of reviewing it, it judicially verified the outcome of the guardianship authority’s actions in 1979, just as the first-instance court had done.

3. SUBSTANTIAL VIOLATION OF CIVIL PROCEDURE

1. The second-instance court did not genuinely assess the essential grounds of appeal

Article 396(1) CPA requires the second-instance court, in the reasoning of its decision, to assess the essential grounds of appeal and state the reasons it considered of its own motion. The right to a reasoned judicial decision is an integral part of the right to a fair trial under Article 6 of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms.

In this case the Court of Appeal failed to fulfil that obligation.

In his appeal of 18 March 2026, the plaintiff expressly and in detail pointed out that the first-instance court had failed to provide legally grounded answers to the following questions:

• whether the particular case falls under Article 30(1) or Article 30(4) SAPVAA;

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• when the child was allegedly abandoned;
• when the search for the mother began;
• what specific search measures were taken;
• whether the statutory six-month period had expired by 21 June 1979;
• on what legal basis the consent of the known and living mother was replaced;
• how a second adoption in 1984 could be possible after an allegedly lawful full adoption in 1979;
• the legal significance of Vera Radovanović’s conflict of interest;
• the relationship between the adoption proceedings and probate proceedings O.196/79;
• how the authority of the Self-Managing Community of Interest (SIZ) for Social Protection fits with the letter of the Municipal Court in Novi Sad dated 20 July 1979, addressed to the Secretariat for Veterans’ and Disability Affairs and Social Protection as the guardianship authority, seeking protection of the same child’s rights in probate proceedings.

The Court of Appeal likewise gave no legally grounded answers to those questions.

On the central ground of appeal concerning Article 30, the Court of Appeal stated:

“The plaintiff’s arguments on appeal that it is unclear whether his case was brought under paragraph 1 or paragraph 4 of the cited provision are unacceptable, considering that, in the described situation, the conditions for adoption relating to the status of the plaintiff’s parents as the adoptee’s parents had in any event been fulfilled.”

This formulation does not provide an answer grounded in the law; it avoids providing one.

The plaintiff did not ask the second-instance court for a general, empty assertion that the conditions had “in any event” been fulfilled.

He asked the court to provide a reasoned and detailed answer to these questions:

• which paragraph of Article 30 it applies;
• on what facts the application of that paragraph rests;
• by what evidentiary steps those facts were established.

The Court of Appeal did not do so.

This constitutes a substantial violation of civil procedure under Article 374(1) CPA in conjunction with Article 396(1) CPA: the court failed to assess an essential ground of appeal in a way permitting effective review of the judgment’s lawfulness.

2. The second-instance court did not answer the ground of appeal concerning the six-month period and specific measures to find the mother

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In his appeal, the plaintiff expressly pointed out that Article 30(1) SAPVAA permits full adoption of a child abandoned by his parents only if their whereabouts remain unestablished after six months from the child’s abandonment.

The appeal expressly stated that the first-instance judgment had not established:

• the date of the child’s alleged abandonment;
• the date on which the search for the mother began;
• the course and content of that search;
• whether the statutory six-month period expired before 21 June 1979;
• the evidence on which this was established.

The second-instance court answered none of those questions. Nor was the sequence established: abandonment – expiry of six months – search measures – failure of the search.

Instead, it stated that the mother had been “at an unknown place of residence for a prolonged period”, that she “could not have been available to the guardianship authority to give consent to adoption”, and that “even years later the guardianship authority could not find any information about the plaintiff’s mother”.

This does not answer the ground of appeal.

The question was not whether the mother was or was not found later.

The question was whether, before 21 June 1979, the mandatory statutory conditions for full adoption without parental consent were fulfilled. If they were not, or if the statutory six-month period expired after 28 June 1979, full adoption could not have taken place consistently with the mandatory provisions of Article 30 SAPVAA.

The authority’s later assertion that it could not find the mother does not prove the lawfulness of the earlier full adoption.

The Court of Appeal thereby avoided answering a decisive ground of appeal and replaced the legal test in Article 30(1) with a general post-factum assertion having no decisive significance for assessing the lawfulness of the 1979 act—an assessment on which the determination of nullity of the full adoption depends.

3. The second-instance court did not answer the ground of appeal concerning the legal basis for replacing the consent of the known and living mother

The plaintiff expressly raised these questions in his appeal:

• if the case falls under Article 30(4) SAPVAA, where is the other parent’s prior consent;
• if the mother was known and alive, under what statutory provision was her consent replaced with that of an ad hoc guardian;
• whether such substitution was permissible under the full-adoption regime.

The Court of Appeal gave no adequate answer. It merely stated that the ad hoc guardian Vera Radovanović had consented to the adoption, as though the mere existence of that declaration resolved the question of its lawfulness.

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Article 30(4) SAPVAA expressly speaks of the other parent’s prior consent.

Article 42 of the same Act, specifying which provisions of the general adoption regime also apply, as appropriate, to full adoption, does not refer to Article 5, which sets out when a child’s guardian may consent to adoption under the general regime.

The Court of Appeal did not even mention this decisive fact.

If this case falls under Article 30(4) SAPVAA, the prior consent of the known and living mother was a statutory condition for full adoption.

SAPVAA does not entitle the guardianship authority to replace that condition with a formula about the mother’s “unavailability” or the signature of an ad hoc guardian without a clear statutory basis.

Since Article 41 SAPVAA expressly identifies failure to fulfil the conditions of Article 30(4) as a ground of nullity of full adoption, this ground of appeal was directly decisive.

The Court of Appeal did not assess it.

4. The second-instance court did not answer the ground of appeal concerning the second adoption in 1984

The appeal specifically stressed that the first-instance judgment recorded that the plaintiff was adopted again on 26 September 1984 by Periša Petrović and Georgina Petrović, although Milorad and Gospava Vasić had supposedly lawfully established full adoption on 21 June 1979.

The plaintiff pointed out that this directly raises application of:

• Article 40 SAPVAA, under which full adoption may not be dissolved.

The Court of Appeal gave no adequate answer to this ground of appeal, stating only that “the validity of such adoption is not the subject of these proceedings”.

The plaintiff did not request in his claim a decision on the validity of the 1984 adoption, nor did he use it as a ground of appeal in that sense. He sought assessment of the legal significance of the fact that the same child, after an allegedly lawful and indissoluble full adoption in 1979, was placed for adoption again with another married couple in 1984.

If the 1979 full adoption was lawful, valid and indissoluble, a new adoption of the same child could not have been carried out in 1984.

If it nevertheless was carried out, by the same social-protection system, that fact directly undermines the conclusion that the 1979 adoption was legally unproblematic and permanently established.

The Court of Appeal did not answer these questions. It completely disregarded them in its reasoning as though they were irrelevant, although it should have assessed them, particularly in view of the inquisitorial principle in Article 205 FA.

5. The second-instance court completely disregarded the ground of appeal concerning Vera Radovanović’s conflict of interest

The appeal raised in detail the question of Vera Radovanović’s procedural and factual role.

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The files show that Vera Radovanović:

• participated in shaping the narrative about the plaintiff’s mother;
• participated in relativising Pavle Lakatoš’s paternal line;
• maintained and prepared the case documentation;
• recommended the particular adopters specifically for the minor Milivoj Miletić;
• was appointed ad hoc guardian to consent to full adoption;
• consented to full adoption;
• then reappeared in 1984 in a new cycle of institutional removal and a new adoption of the same child.

In his appeal, the plaintiff clearly explained why assessing this concentration of roles in one person is decisive: the same official could not simultaneously:

• build the case;
• create the factual narrative;
• recommend particular adopters;
• assume the role of protector of the child’s interests;
• and then consent to the outcome she herself had previously prepared, which proved wrong and contrary to the child’s best interests.

The Court of Appeal did not assess these arguments, did not say that they were irrelevant to a correct and lawful decision, and did not consider them in any way. It completely disregarded them. It did not call the argument immaterial. It did not reject it.

Such failure to assess the grounds of appeal violates Article 396(1) CPA and renders the second-instance judgment unlawful.

6. The second-instance court did not genuinely answer the ground of appeal concerning the guardianship authority’s competence

The plaintiff’s appeal did not challenge in the abstract that the Self-Managing Community of Interest for Social Protection in Novi Sad could have had certain powers as a guardianship authority under a general decision from 1977.

The plaintiff challenged:

• by which specific act that authority acquired competence over the minor Milivoj Miletić before 21 June 1979;
• when that competence was established;
• on what facts;
• how this fits with the Municipal Court in Novi Sad’s letter of 20 July 1979 directing the Secretariat for Veterans’ and Disability Affairs and Social Protection, as guardianship authority, to appoint a guardian to protect the rights and interests of the minor Milivoj Miletić in the probate proceedings after Pavle Lakatoš’s death.

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The Court of Appeal did not answer this. Instead, it stated that the SIZ for Social Protection in Novi Sad was the authorised guardianship body under Article 1 of the Decision Entrusting Guardianship Authority Functions.

That does not resolve the specific objection.

The question was not whether the SIZ could be a guardianship authority at all, but:

• how it specifically acquired competence over the plaintiff;
• why, in July 1979, the court addressed a different body as guardianship authority to protect the same child’s rights;
• how the same minor could have two different institutional guardianship channels in two parallel proceedings—one for full adoption, the other for protection of inheritance rights.

Instead of answering the specific ground of appeal, the second-instance court offered a general statement of a legal rule and thereby avoided a concrete answer addressing the substance of the dispute.

7. The second-instance court did not answer the ground of appeal concerning Pavle Lakatoš and probate proceedings O.196/79

In these proceedings the plaintiff did not ask the court to determine Pavle Lakatoš’s paternity.

Here the question of Pavle Lakatoš has a different, directly relevant significance:

whether the lower courts were entitled to treat the administrative formulation “father unknown” as unquestionable and sufficient for full adoption, although other official files show a clear paternal, family and inheritance trail.

The appeal specifically referred to:

• the divorce file of the District Court in Novi Sad P-1642/76;
• the statements and testimony in that case that Pavle Lakatoš had a child outside marriage with Cvita Miletić;
• the fact that the minor Milivoj Miletić lived within his paternal family circle;
• the record of 19 March 1979 in probate case O.196/79 stating that the minor Milivoj was with his grandparents, the deceased’s parents;
• the Municipal Court’s letter of 20 July 1979 seeking appointment of a guardian to protect his rights and interests in the probate proceedings after Pavle Lakatoš’s death;
• the decision of 23 November 1979 declaring the minor Milivoj an heir;
• the appeal proceedings Gž 11/80, showing that private heirs possessed information from the secret full-adoption proceedings and used it against the child’s inheritance position.

The Court of Appeal reduced this evidentiary sequence to assertions:

• that Pavle Lakatoš did not acknowledge paternity;
• that paternity had not been established by a judicial decision;

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• that the initial probate decision was subsequently set aside.

The first assertion is factually incorrect and directly contradicts judicial file P-1642/76. We again stress that determining paternity is not the subject of these proceedings. Nevertheless, the Court of Appeal plainly distorted the facts in the case file when its reasoning stated that Pavle Lakatoš had not acknowledged the child.

In divorce proceedings before the District Court in Novi Sad, P-1642/76, at the main hearing of 26 October 1977, Pavle Lakatoš, examined as a party, stated that after leaving hospital he began living with another woman, an agricultural worker, and that he “had a son with her”; he then identified that woman as Cvita.

This fact did not remain merely an oral statement by him.

In its judgment P-1642/76 of 26 October 1977, the District Court in Novi Sad stated in its factual findings that Pavle Lakatoš began living with the worker Miletić Cvita, with whom he had a child.

Accordingly, the Court of Appeal could not truthfully write that Pavle Lakatoš “did not acknowledge paternity”.

If it considered this legally relevant, it could have stated that paternity had not been established by a separate decision.

That is not, however, the same as asserting that Pavle Lakatoš had not acknowledged that the child was his.

Despite the express ground of appeal that Pavle Lakatoš acknowledged the child in the divorce context, the Court of Appeal asserted the opposite in the contested judgment, further distorting the actual content of the appeal and the facts.

The plaintiff did not argue that a final decision had established him as Pavle Lakatoš’s heir.

He argued that the probate files, divorce file P-1642/76 and other judicial documents show that the administrative formula “father unknown” was not a neutral description of an absence of information, but a reduction of the real paternal and inheritance trail existing in state files and directly relevant to the lawfulness of full adoption.

The Court of Appeal avoided this legal problem on two levels:

• first, it made the factually incorrect assertion that Pavle Lakatoš had not acknowledged paternity;
• then, it replaced the question of the lawfulness of the administrative classification “father unknown” with the question whether paternity had already been established by a final decision at that time.

These are different questions.

In doing so, the Court of Appeal did not assess the ground of appeal as actually made. It first distorted it factually, then recast it into a weaker version, and then rejected it.

4. INCORRECT APPLICATION OF SUBSTANTIVE LAW

1. The substantive law in force when full adoption was established applies to this case

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The lawfulness of the full adoption of 21 June 1979 must be assessed under the substantive law in force when that adoption was established.

That law is the 1976 Adoption Act of SAP Vojvodina.

The lower courts had to assess the contested act against the conditions for full adoption then in force, not against subsequently devised justifications, general formulas or a present-day interest in maintaining the act’s consequences.

The central provisions in these proceedings are therefore:

• Article 30;
• Article 31;
• Article 34;
• Article 35;
• Article 37;
• Article 38;
• Article 40;
• Article 41;
• Article 42;
• Article 2 of the Adoption Act of SAP Vojvodina.

2. The second-instance court incorrectly applied Articles 30 and 41 of the Adoption Act of SAP Vojvodina

Article 41 SAPVAA expressly provides that full adoption is void if, when it was established, the conditions in Article 30(1), (2) and (4), and Article 31 of that Act, were not fulfilled.

Correct application of Article 30 was therefore central to the decision in this case.

The Court of Appeal did not apply Article 30 correctly.

It effectively neutralised that article.

Instead of determining whether this case fell under paragraph 1 or paragraph 4 and checking fulfilment of that paragraph’s conditions, the court wrote that the conditions “had in any event been fulfilled”.

Such a construction is not an application of the law.

Article 30(1) and Article 30(4) govern different legal situations.

Article 30(1) concerns a child below the age of five whose parents are dead or unknown, or have abandoned the child and whose whereabouts remain unestablished after six months from abandonment.

Article 30(4) concerns the situation where one parent is dead or unknown; in that situation full adoption may be established only with the other parent’s prior consent.

These two provisions are not interchangeable.

They do not prescribe the same prerequisites.

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They do not require the same facts.

They do not produce the same legal regime.

The Court of Appeal had to select the applicable legal regime and check its elements.

It did not do so.

3. If the case falls under Article 30(1) SAPVAA, the statutory conditions were not established

If this case falls under Article 30(1) SAPVAA, the court had to establish:

• who abandoned the child;
• when abandonment occurred;
• when the six-month period began;
• what specific measures were taken to establish the parents’ whereabouts;
• whether the six-month period had expired by 21 June 1979;
• whether their whereabouts remained unestablished after that period expired.

Neither the first-instance nor the second-instance court established any of those facts.

The Court of Appeal was satisfied with a general assertion that the mother’s whereabouts had been unknown “for a prolonged period”.

The law does not recognise “a prolonged period” as a substitute for a statutorily specified period and a proven unsuccessful search.

The law requires a specific sequence:

abandonment – expiry of six months – unsuccessful establishment of whereabouts.

That sequence was not established.

Without it, the condition in Article 30(1) is not proven, and Article 41 leads directly to the conclusion that full adoption is void.

4. If the case falls under Article 30(4) SAPVAA, the prior consent of the known and living mother is absent

If this case falls under Article 30(4) SAPVAA, the legal position is even clearer.

The second-instance court proceeds on the view that Pavle Lakatoš had not been legally established as the father and therefore treats him, for the purposes of its reasoning, as an unknown parent.

At the same time, the court establishes that the plaintiff’s biological mother was Cvita Miletić, with full identifying information.

The mother was therefore not unknown.

She was known and alive.

In that situation, Article 30(4) SAPVAA requires the other parent’s prior consent—in this case, Cvita Miletić’s.

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No such consent exists.

The second-instance court attempts to fill that gap by stating that the mother “could not have been available to give consent”, while the ad hoc guardian Vera Radovanović consented to adoption.

Under the full-adoption regime, however, it is not enough to establish that somebody else signed a declaration.

It must be established that the law permits such substitution.

Article 42 SAPVAA, governing which provisions of the general adoption regime also apply, as appropriate, to full adoption, does not refer to Article 5, which concerns a guardian’s consent in place of a parent’s in certain situations under the general regime.

This means that Article 30(4) remains a specific, strict rule for full adoption.

Where one parent is dead or unknown, the other parent’s prior consent is required.

The Court of Appeal identified no statutory provision permitting substitution of the known and living mother’s consent with that of an ad hoc guardian under the full-adoption regime.

Article 30(4), read with Article 41 SAPVAA, was thereby incorrectly applied.

5. The second-instance court confused Articles 30 and 31 of the Adoption Act of SAP Vojvodina

In the part of its reasoning rejecting the central ground of appeal, the Court of Appeal states:

“During the proceedings and in his grounds of appeal, the plaintiff mainly argues that the conditions in Article 31 of the aforementioned Act were not fulfilled for establishing his full adoption on 21 June 1979 (...). Paragraph 1 of that provision stipulates that a child below the age of five whose parents are dead or unknown may be fully adopted...”

This is incorrect.

The content the Court of Appeal attributes to Article 31 is actually the content of Article 30(1) SAPVAA.

Article 31 does not govern the status of the child’s parents. It provides that full adoption may be established only by both spouses.

This error is not an insignificant technical slip in a peripheral part of the reasoning.

It occurs precisely where the second-instance court attempts to answer the main ground of appeal concerning incorrect application of Article 30.

A court that rejects the central ground of appeal concerning Article 30 by incorrectly identifying the provision itself, and then avoids determining whether it applies paragraph 1 or paragraph 4, has not correctly applied substantive law.

6. The second-instance court did not assess the legal significance of the second adoption in 1984 in relation to Article 40 and the status consequences of full adoption under Articles 35, 37 and 38 of the Adoption Act of SAP Vojvodina

Article 40 SAPVAA provides:

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“Full adoption may not be dissolved.”

In the factual part of its judgment, the Court of Appeal accepts that:

• on 21 June 1979 the plaintiff was fully adopted by Milorad and Gospava Vasić;
• on 26 September 1984 the plaintiff was adopted again by Periša and Georgina Petrović.

If the first full adoption was lawful and indissoluble, a second adoption of the same child could not lawfully have been carried out.

If the second adoption was nevertheless carried out, that cannot have no bearing on assessment of the legal sustainability of the first full adoption.

The second-instance court refused to draw any conclusion from this direct statutory contradiction, reasoning that the validity of the second adoption is not the subject of the proceedings.

That approach is wrong.

The subject of the proceedings is the nullity of the 1979 full adoption.

The fact that the same system placed the same child for adoption again in 1984 is directly relevant to assessing whether the 1979 act was indeed lawfully, fully and permanently established.

The Court of Appeal neutralised the legal significance of this fact instead of assessing it.

It thereby failed to apply Article 40 and assess the status consequences under Articles 35, 37 and 38 SAPVAA.

7. The second-instance court incorrectly applied Article 34 of the Adoption Act of SAP Vojvodina

Article 34 SAPVAA provides:

“Information about the adoptee’s parents shall not be entered in the record establishing full adoption.”

Yet the Court of Appeal states in its reasoning that the full-adoption record Up.03-507/79 of 21 June 1979 records:

• that the minor Milivoj’s mother has been at an unknown place of residence for a prolonged period;
• that she does not perform her parental duties without justifiable reasons;
• that Vera Radovanović was appointed ad hoc guardian and consents to adoption.

In other words, according to the Court of Appeal’s own factual description, the full-adoption record contains information about the adoptee’s parent, and uses it as the central factual basis for establishing full adoption.

That directly contradicts Article 34 SAPVAA.

The Court of Appeal did not assess this legal consequence at all.

Although this violation was not separately numbered in the appeal, it follows from the contested judgment’s own factual description and is a legal consequence of the facts the second-instance court itself accepted as established.

It is therefore directly relevant in proceedings on this appeal on points of law, as further confirmation that the lower courts applied SAPVAA selectively.

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They invoked it when it supported the 1979 outcome and ignored it when the same file revealed the unlawful structure of the proceedings.

8. The second-instance court incorrectly assessed the inheritance and paternal trail as legally irrelevant background

The lawfulness of the 1979 full adoption cannot be assessed in isolation from the parallel probate proceedings after the death of Pavle Lakatoš, in which the minor Milivoj Miletić appears as a child whose rights and interests must be protected.

In this context, the following facts are decisive:

• in the record of 19 March 1979, the minor Milivoj Miletić is recorded as a child staying with his grandparents, the parents of the deceased Pavle Lakatoš;
• on 20 July 1979, the Municipal Court in Novi Sad seeks appointment of a guardian to protect his rights and interests in the probate proceedings;
• by the decision of 23 November 1979 he is declared an heir after Pavle Lakatoš;
• in appeal proceedings Gž 11/80, the other heirs possess information about the full-adoption proceedings, including the assertion that the adopters do not object to Milivoj inheriting from anyone, and use that material against his inheritance position.

This shows that the case files simultaneously contained:

• an adoption track portraying the child as eligible for complete displacement of identity;
• a probate track in which the same child appears as Milivoj Miletić, connected with Pavle Lakatoš’s paternal line and the exercise of inheritance rights.

The Court of Appeal reduced this conflict to the subsequent setting aside of the inheritance decision and thereby avoided assessing its significance for the lawfulness of the full adoption of 21 June 1979.

This is an incorrect application of substantive law: the conditions for full adoption must be assessed against the legal framework and facts at the time it was established, not against the later removal of one of the traces revealing those facts.

9. The second-instance court did not assess the legal significance of Articles 35, 37 and 38 of the Adoption Act of SAP Vojvodina

Article 35 SAPVAA provides that the report establishing full adoption contains information about the birth entry being cancelled and information for the adoptee’s new birth entry, identifying the adopters as parents.

Article 37 provides that full adoption terminates the statutory rights and duties between the adoptee and his blood relatives.

Article 38 provides that determination of the paternity and maternity of a fully adopted child is not permitted.

These provisions show the actual effect of full adoption.

They confirm that the contested act did not merely change a surname or family placement.

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It produced:

• cancellation of the existing birth entry;
• a new entry identifying the adopters as parents;
• termination of rights and duties towards blood relatives;
• a prohibition on determining paternity and maternity;
• the indissolubility of that legal situation.

Where such a mechanism is applied without lawful fulfilment of the conditions in Article 30, the consequence is not an ordinary procedural error.

The consequence is legally locking the child into a new administrative identity.

The Court of Appeal did not assess this function of the Act, although it is directly decisive for understanding the consequences of the contested full adoption.

5. THE CONSTITUTIONAL AND CONVENTION DIMENSION OF THE DISPUTE

1. The case directly concerns the right to identity, origins, personal history and protection from institutional maintenance of an administratively severed identity

These proceedings are not an ordinary dispute about one historical family-law act.

They determine the legal sustainability of the act by which:

• a child born as Milivoj Miletić was administratively renamed Milan Vasić;
• the original parental entry was removed from the birth register;
• Milorad and Gospava Vasić were entered as parents;
• Pavle Lakatoš’s paternal line was suppressed through the formula “father unknown”;
• the inheritance trail towards the paternal family was severed;
• the legal route to establishing biological origins was closed through the full-adoption regime;
• following the breakdown of the first adoptive family, the child was put through a new adoption with another married couple in 1984.

The files considered in these proceedings do not show how the previous full adoption of 1979 was legally removed, if it was removed at all.

The consequence of the contested act was not merely a change of surname.

It was administrative replacement of the child’s original identity, interruption of biological, family, inheritance and linguistic continuity, and removal of the child from the setting in which he could have retained a relationship with his origins.

The plaintiff is the child of a mother of Croatian origin, Cvita Miletić, and a man whose paternal line, family trail and inheritance track emerge from several state files as Pavle Lakatoš, a Hungarian.

Through administrative removal from that circle, the plaintiff lost not only a register entry but also direct access to his paternal relatives, the Hungarian language and his actual family origins.

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The plaintiff did not discover the truth about his origins because the state enabled effective exposure of the severing of identity it had itself produced. He discovered it through his own personal investigation over several years, connecting scattered family, archival and judicial traces.

The present-day violation of the right to identity in this case therefore lies not only in historical concealment of origins.

It also lies in the fact that, after the plaintiff’s original identity line was uncovered and documented, the domestic courts maintained the legal consequences of a full adoption whose lawfulness falls apart before the text of the law then in force and the files examined in the proceedings.

The case is no longer confined to the right to discover one’s origins.

The plaintiff discovered them without the state’s assistance.

It now concerns the right not to have the state, after the truth has emerged, continue judicially maintaining an administrative order founded on erasure of his original identity.

2. Article 78 of the Constitution of the Republic of Serbia is directly relevant

Within the domestic constitutional framework, this violation has a direct basis in Article 78 of the Constitution of the Republic of Serbia, prohibiting forced assimilation of persons belonging to national minorities and guaranteeing protection against any act directed towards such assimilation.

The plaintiff does not invoke this article as an abstract legal-political assertion.

He invokes it as the domestic constitutional expression of the same identity protection violated in these proceedings.

The plaintiff is the child of a mother of Croatian origin, Cvita Miletić, and a man whose paternal line, family trail and inheritance track emerge from state files as connected with Pavle Lakatoš, a Hungarian.

By administrative removal from that circle, the child was not merely renamed. He was cut off from his mother’s Croatian line, his father’s Hungarian line, his father’s language, blood relationships, inheritance position and actual family continuity.

The domestic courts now refuse to resolve or correct the legal consequences of that act.

Maintaining the legal consequences of the contested full adoption today is not neutral preservation of an old family-law act.

It constitutes continued administrative assimilation through a contemporary judicial act.

Such an approach directly conflicts with the prohibition of forced assimilation in Article 78 of the Constitution of the Republic of Serbia.

3. Article 8 of the European Convention protects origins, identity and personal history

The European Court of Human Rights has repeatedly confirmed in its case-law that the right to private life under Article 8 of the European Convention includes:

• a person’s right to know their origins;

• the right to discover the identity of their biological parents;

• the right to establish their biological relationship;

• the right to personal history and the reasons for adoption;

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• the right not to have the state impose disproportionate obstacles to clarifying origins.

In A.K. and L. v. Croatia, the Court stressed the public authorities’ obligation to seek the adoptee’s biological parent’s consent to adoption.

In Godelli v. Italy, the Court stressed the importance of an adopted person’s right to discover their biological origins.

In Jäggi v. Switzerland, the Court held that an individual’s right to establish their origins forms an integral part of the concept of private life.

In Boljević v. Serbia, the Court found a violation of Article 8 because the domestic legal order did not enable effective reconsideration of biological paternity and origins, despite the passage of time.

In Mitrevska v. North Macedonia, the Court confirmed that an adopted person’s wish to learn the reasons for adoption, biological origins, life before adoption and the identity of biological parents lies at the heart of private life protected by Article 8.

In Görgúlú v. Germany, the Court states that although Article 8 of the Convention contains no express procedural requirements, “the decision-making process involved in measures of interference must be fair and such as to ensure due respect for the interests safeguarded by Article 8.”

These standards are relevant to this case as a minimum level of protection.

If Article 8 of the European Convention protects a person’s right to discover the truth about their origins, it all the more protects their right not to have the state, after that truth is revealed, continue legally maintaining an act by which their original origins were administratively severed.

In this case, the domestic courts were not deciding on the plaintiff’s abstract interest in one day discovering who he is.

The plaintiff had already discovered that himself.

They were deciding whether, despite the exposed contradictions in the files and the clear conflict between the contested adoption and the law then in force, the Republic of Serbia would continue legally maintaining the result of the administrative replacement of identity in 1979.

By upholding that act without genuinely confronting its legal and identity-related collapse, the lower courts did not merely fail to protect the plaintiff’s right to origins and identity.

They prolonged the effect of the legal mechanism through which those origins and that identity had previously been severed.

4. Article 8 of the European Convention and Article 78 of the Constitution directly bind the Supreme Court

In proceedings on this appeal on points of law, the Supreme Court is not deciding only on a historical event from 1979.

It is deciding whether the highest judicial instance in the Republic of Serbia will accept that:

• the full adoption of 1979 remains legally maintained although fulfilment of the conditions in Article 30(1) or Article 30(4) SAPVAA has not been clarified;
• the absence of Cvita’s consent is covered by the legally unexplained consent of an ad hoc guardian;

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• the six-month period and a specific search for the mother are replaced with a general formula of “unavailability”;
• the second adoption of 1984 has no legal significance for assessment of the first adoption, although it conflicts with indissolubility under Article 40 and the status consequences under Articles 35, 37 and 38 SAPVAA;
• Vera Radovanović’s conflict of interest remains without a judicial answer;
• the inheritance and paternal trail is removed from the legal picture through the assertion that Pavle Lakatoš did not acknowledge paternity, although file P-1642/76 shows the opposite;
• Article 34 has no consequence, although the record’s own contents show its violation;
• Articles 35, 37, 38 and 40 receive no real assessment, although they show that full adoption produced administrative locking-in of a new identity;
• all of this is treated as an ordinary family-law dispute without an identity, inheritance-law, constitutional or Convention dimension.

If such a judgment remained in force, the Republic of Serbia, through its highest ordinary court, would give present-day judicial confirmation to the consequences of the lawlessness of 1979 and 1984.

Responsibility would then no longer rest solely with the historical guardianship authority.

There would also be present-day responsibility of the judiciary of the Republic of Serbia which, after complete and clear presentation of and warnings about all contradictions in the files, chose not to resolve them, but to maintain the legal consequences of a void adoption and thereby continue the plaintiff’s administrative assimilation through a contemporary judicial act.

5. Article 6 of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms—the right to a reasoned judicial decision

Besides Article 8, the contested judgment raises a serious question about the fair-trial standard in Article 6(1) of the European Convention, of which the right to a reasoned judicial decision forms an integral part.

The European Court of Human Rights does not require domestic courts to answer every incidental assertion made by the parties.

It requires them to answer arguments decisive for the outcome of the dispute.

In this case, the Court of Appeal did not answer the decisive arguments concerning:

• the legal regime of Article 30 SAPVAA;
• the six-month period and the search for the mother;
• the legal basis for replacing the mother’s consent;
• Article 42 and the impossibility of arbitrarily applying Article 5 SAPVAA to full adoption;
• the second adoption in 1984;
• Vera Radovanović’s conflict of interest;
• the specific issue of the guardianship authority’s competence;

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• the inheritance and paternal trail as counter-evidence to the administrative classification “father unknown”;
• Article 34 SAPVAA;
• Articles 35, 37, 38 and 40 SAPVAA as provisions showing the actual identity-related function of full adoption.

Instead of answering, the court used general formulas, selectively shortened the grounds of appeal and remained completely silent on certain key points.

Such a judgment does not permit effective review of lawfulness.

It does not meet the standard of a reasoned judicial decision in a dispute touching the core of the plaintiff’s identity, origins and personal history.

This violation is particularly grave because the plaintiff does not ask the state to discover origins still unknown to him. He asks the court to stop maintaining the legal consequences of the act by which his already uncovered original origins were administratively severed unlawfully.

When a court answers a dispute framed in this way by remaining silent on decisive arguments, selectively abbreviating grounds of appeal and using formulations that evade the core problem, it does not merely withhold a reasoned decision.

It participates in continuing to keep unlawful acts in force, acts that caused a series of consequences, particularly consequences for the plaintiff’s identity characteristics.

6. INSTITUTIONAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE SUPREME COURT’S DECISION

This appeal on points of law deliberately leaves the Supreme Court a complete legal record of what is requested of it and what it assumes through its decision.

The case is not marginal.

The case is not technical.

The case is not a dispute about a procedural triviality.

The question is whether the Republic of Serbia in 2026, through its highest judicial instance, confirms:

• full adoption carried out without clarification of the statutory basis under Article 30 SAPVAA;
• removal of a child from his original identity and family continuity;
• bypassing of the known and living mother;
• suppression of the paternal and inheritance trail;
• cancellation of the original register entry and a new entry identifying the adopters as parents;
• termination of rights and duties towards blood relatives;
• a legal prohibition on determining paternity and maternity after full adoption;
• double adoption of the same child despite indissolubility under Article 40 and the status consequences under Articles 35, 37 and 38 SAPVAA;

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• proceedings in which the same official constructs the case, selects the adopters, assumes the role of ad hoc guardian and consents to adoption.

The Supreme Court therefore now has two legal paths.

The first is to allow the appeal on points of law, set aside the Court of Appeal’s judgment and stop continued judicial maintenance of a decision that cannot withstand the text of the law, the documents in the file and the Convention standard of the right to identity.

The second is to uphold that judgment and thereby assume present-day responsibility for maintaining it through the highest ordinary judicial authority of the Republic of Serbia.

In that second case, the Supreme Court’s judgment will not be merely the dismissal of an extraordinary legal remedy.

It will become the highest domestic judicial document by which the Republic of Serbia, despite examination of all the evidence clearly indicating the nullity of full adoption, confirms the legal consequences of administratively severing the identity, origins, paternal line, inheritance position, blood relationships, legal route to biological origins and linguistic-national continuity of the child who in 1979 was Milivoj Miletić.

7. REQUEST

For all these reasons, the plaintiff requests that the Supreme Court of the Republic of Serbia:

1. ALLOW the plaintiff’s appeal on points of law;
2. VARY the contested judgment of the Court of Appeal in Novi Sad Gž2 211/26 of 22 April 2026 by ALLOWING the plaintiff’s appeal, VARYING the judgment of the Basic Court in Novi Sad P2.1435/2024 of 9 February 2026 and ruling as follows:

I. The plaintiff’s claim is GRANTED: the full adoption established and declared by the decision of the Self-Managing Community of Interest for Social Protection in Novi Sad, no. UP.03-507/79 of 21 June 1979 in Novi Sad, whereby Vasić Milorad, born on 15 February 1941 in Osiječani, municipality of Doboj, and Vasić Gospava, born on 21 August 1932 in D. Klakar, municipality of Doboj, both residing in Budisava, Petefi Šandora 52, adopt the minor Miletić Milivoj, and whereby the adopted minor Miletić Milivoje receives the new name Vasić Milan, is annulled as absolutely void.

II. The defendant is ORDERED, immediately on receipt of the judgment, to issue a decision annulling the decision of the Self-Managing Community of Interest for Social Protection in Novi Sad, no. UP.03-507/79 of 21 June 1979, authorising subsequent entry in the birth register of the information identifying the adopters Vasić Milorad and Vasić Gospava of Budisava as parents of the fully adopted child—the plaintiff—and, through that annulment, to restore the first birth entry of the fully adopted child—the plaintiff.

3. ORDER the defendant to reimburse the plaintiff’s litigation costs;

or

1. ALLOW the plaintiff’s appeal on points of law;
2. SET ASIDE the judgment of the Court of Appeal in Novi Sad Gž2 211/26 of 22 April 2026 and the judgment of the Basic Court in Novi Sad P2.1435/2024 of 9 February 2026, and

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REMIT the case for retrial before the first- or second-instance court, clearly directing the lower courts that in the renewed proceedings they must answer the following questions:

• whether this case falls under Article 30(1) or Article 30(4) of the Adoption Act of SAP Vojvodina;
• whether the statutory conditions of the six-month period and an unsuccessful search for the mother have been proven;
• whether there was lawful prior consent from the known and living mother, or a lawful basis for any substitution of that consent;
• the legal significance of Article 42 of the Adoption Act of SAP Vojvodina regarding the impossibility of arbitrarily applying Article 5 to full adoption;
• the legal significance of the second adoption in 1984 in relation to Article 40 of the Adoption Act of SAP Vojvodina;
• the legal significance of Vera Radovanović’s conflict of interest;
• the legal significance of probate proceedings O.196/79, appeal proceedings Gž 11/80 and divorce file P-1642/76 for assessment of the lawfulness of the administrative formula “father unknown”;
• whether the full-adoption record, by its own contents accepted by the courts, directly conflicts with Article 34 of the Adoption Act of SAP Vojvodina;
• the legal significance of Articles 35, 37, 38 and 40 of the Adoption Act of SAP Vojvodina regarding the objective function of full adoption as a mechanism for cancelling the old birth entry, making a new entry identifying the adopters as parents, terminating rights and duties towards blood relatives, prohibiting determination of paternity and maternity, and making that legal situation indissoluble;
• whether Article 8 of the European Convention and Article 78 of the Constitution of the Republic of Serbia must apply in this case, given that it concerns the right to identity, origins, personal history, family continuity, prohibition of forced assimilation and protection from state maintenance of the administrative severing of original identity.

Schedule of costs:

• For preparation of this appeal on points of law: RSD 55,000.00, pursuant to the Tariff of Fees and Reimbursement of Costs for Advocates’ Work.

Kragujevac, 29 May 2026

Nikolaj Petronijević, advocate

Editorial source comparison

The revision’s page 15 says “ne protive” (“do not object”). Pervaz’s appeal dated 12 December 1979, on physical page 2 of the linked probate PDF, says “ne traže da mldb. MILIVOJ bilo koga nasledjuje” (“do not seek for the minor Milivoj to inherit from anyone”). It is Pervaz’s assertion about the adopters. Both sources retain their original wording.

Compare the probate source · PDF · 2

Strasbourg authorities cited on page 18

These references identify the actual cases and the scope of the cited standards. Their application to this nullity claim is the argument made in the revision.

• A.K. and L. v. Croatia · 37956/11: Procedural safeguards before severing family ties: representation and notification. The finding was not a universal rule requiring consent in every adoption. Verified primary text / official case note.

• Godelli v. Italy · 33783/09: Access to origins information; Article 8 violation where the system provided no adequate balancing mechanism. See paragraphs 48–59. Verified primary text / official case note.

• Jäggi v. Switzerland · 58757/00: DNA testing to establish paternal origins after the presumed father’s death; Article 8 violation. See paragraphs 37–44. Verified primary text / official case note.

• Boljević v. Serbia · 47443/14: Reopening old paternity proceedings and modern DNA evidence; rigid time limits prevented consideration of the applicant’s specific situation. Article 8 violation; paragraphs 54–57. Verified primary text / official case note.

• Mitrevska v. North Macedonia · 20949/21: Adoption secrecy and access to biological origins and health information; Article 8 required balancing the competing interests. See paragraphs 40–41 and 50–59. Verified primary text / official case note.

• Görgülü v. Germany · 74969/01: Paragraph 52 states the procedural standard. Article 8 violations concerned custody and contact; paragraphs 53–54 found sufficient participation. The pleading spells the name “Görgúlú”. Verified primary text / official case note.