When Congress passed the 1997 Adoption and Safe Families Act, it allowed states to terminate parental rights after a child has been in foster care longer than 15 months.

But the law, intended to keep children from truly abusive homes from languishing in foster care for years, had unintended consequences.

States receive a $4,000 cash bonus from the federal government for each child adopted, multiplied by the percentage that the state exceeds its adoption goal.

The system gives child protective agencies a powerful financial incentive to terminate parental rights, something which they did more than 79,000 times nationwide in 2006, according to the federal Administration for Children and Families (ACF).

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And since infants and toddlers are much easier to place in adoptive homes, they’re often targeted for removal by overzealous social workers based on flimsy or anonymous evidence of parental abuse or neglect.

The 15-month clock, which starts ticking as soon as a child goes into foster care, can easily be run down by months of forced psychological testing and the filing of legal motions and other delaying tactics.

These tactics give a clear advantage to CPS bureaucrats, who have unlimited time and financial resources to wage what often amounts to legal warfare against stunned and beleaguered parents who basically have to prove their own innocence.

If a person commits murder or robs a bank, prosecutors must prove their guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Not so in the Alice-in-Wonderland world of CPS, where individuals and parents are considered guilty as charged by anonymous tipsters whose hidden motivations are never brought to light.

Once the 15 months is up, that fact alone can be used as legal justification to terminate parental rights.

It costs child protective agencies $20,000 on average to keep a child in foster care, versus $8,000 for in-home services for troubled families. This means that a host of lawyers, social workers, therapists, psychologists and other professionals make a lot more money when families are broken apart.

And although CPS’ stated goal is family reunification, the reality is that these agencies reap a second financial windfall when the forced separation between child and parent becomes permanent.