Davey

Lura Katherine Davey, adopting mother, appeals from an order granting the motion of the Los Angeles County Bureau of Adoptions, objector, for a new trial after an order which granted Mrs. Davey’s petition to adopt a minor child. The bureau prosecutes a cross-appeal from the order of adoption. 1 The judge who granted the new trial (and who was not the judge who heard the testimony and ordered the adoption) did so on the ground that the original trial judge erred in law by determining that the natural mother met the statutory requirements as to consent to adoption 2 by *373 her formal consent to adoption by Mrs. Davey and her husband, from whom Mrs. Davey has since been divorced, followed by the natural mother’s informal consent, expressed in a letter to Mrs. Davey, with knowledge that the Daveys had been divorced, that the child be adopted by Mrs. Davey alone. We have concluded that the granting of a new trial on this ground, in the circumstances hereinafter more particularly related, was erroneous, and that the order of adoption should be affirmed.

The natural mother, a resident of Nebraska, came to California in the fall of 1956 for the purpose of giving birth to her child. She…