DNA Research for Adoptees

How testing multiple databases, shared matches, and volunteer searchers help identify birth family



Sealed adoption records keep many adoptees from ever seeing a court file or original birth certificate naming their birth parents. States began closing those records as early as 1917, and by the years after World War II most had gone further, sealing them even from the adoptee. Autosomal DNA testing offers a separate route to the same answer, built on shared DNA with genetic cousins rather than legal access to a sealed document. A shared centimorgan count is only a starting clue, though; it still takes ordinary genealogy research to attach a real name to the connection.


Test With More Than One Company


Every major testing company only shows matches to other people who tested with that same company, so a biological relative can sometimes be sitting in a database the adoptee never joined. AncestryDNA, 23andMe, MyHeritage DNA, and FamilyTreeDNA are the 4 largest, and testing with more than one widens the pool of genetic cousins to work with. GEDmatch lets testers from any of those companies upload their raw DNA and match against each other in one place, and uploads remain free.


Reading Shared DNA as a Range


Every match comes with a shared centimorgan total, and that number predicts a range of possible relationships rather than one exact answer. Roughly 850 shared cM, for example, fits a great-grandparent, a great-aunt or great-uncle, and a first cousin about equally well. The Shared cM Project tool at DNA Painter, built from tens of thousands of submitted relationships, turns a raw number into that list of possibilities. When more than one candidate ancestor fits the evidence, a related DNA Painter tool called What Are the Odds tests each one against the same shared DNA and scores how well it fits. Working from the closest match downward matters more than working through dozens of distant ones, since a single close match can narrow a family line that hundreds of small matches cannot.


Sorting Matches Into Family Lines


Once the closest matches are identified, the next step is grouping the more distant ones by which side of the family they belong to. Genealogist Dana Leeds published a color-coding technique for this in July 2018, now known as the Leeds Method, which sorts 2nd, 3rd, and 4th cousin matches into clusters that often line up with the 4 grandparents. Automated clustering tools now handle much of this sorting without the manual spreadsheet work; a person still has to work out what each cluster actually means.


Building the Matches' Trees, Not Yours


An adoptee often cannot build a family tree upward, since the biological side is exactly what is missing. Instead, the working method, sometimes called a quick and dirty tree, builds outward from the matches themselves: research each match's ancestors far enough to find where 2 clusters intersect in a single couple, then reason forward through that couple's descendants to a generation where someone could be the birth parent. The process is slow by nature and can take weeks or months before a name emerges.


Confirm, Then Ask for Help


Once a specific candidate emerges, testing that person directly, or a close relative of theirs, is the fastest way to confirm the theory; offering to pay for the kit makes people far more willing to agree. Adoptees who get stuck partway through are not without options. Search Angels, a nonprofit, assigns most cases to a volunteer at no charge and combines DNA analysis with traditional search techniques. DNA Detectives, a Facebook-based network, connects searchers with experienced genetic genealogists at a similar scale. For those who would rather have a professional take on the search directly, we also offer paid genealogy research services to help identify a birth parent. Keep in mind that none of these routes can unseal a court file or an original birth certificate; once DNA analysis points to a specific birth parent, confirming it on paper still runs through the same state vital records office or courthouse that holds the sealed original.



Need help finding more records? We have genealogy research services available. You can also try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1.3 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.


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