De Facto

De Facto: A term meaning "in actual fact," regardless of legal or normative standards, and refers to an action or a state of affairs, which for all practical purposes, must be accepted, but which has no formal legal basis. For example, a "de facto family" is a group of individuals who have "psychological" or "emotional" ties to each other, even though they are not related to each other by birth or marriage and do not have a legal document recognizing their family relationship.

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The definition of this term has been taken from the "Adoption Glossary," which contains definitions of a wide variety of words that relate to adoption and infertility. The entire Adoption Glossary is located at http://glossary.adoption.com.

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