Lansing, Mich. ? The Michigan Supreme Court reversed the adoption of a 5-year-old boy by the couple who raised him for most of his life, saying the child should be returned to his birth mother.

In a unanimous decision, the high court said Tuesday that the family judge who terminated Melissa Kucharski’s parental rights lacked enough evidence. The court also said that the judge should never approved the adoption while Kucharski was fighting the termination.

The adoptive parents, John and Deb Wordhouse of Grand Rapids, had no comment.

Jacob was 16 months old when he was placed in the Wordhouses’ foster home in 1999 after his mother acknowledged using marijuana.

In 2001, when Jacob was 3, a family judge terminated Kucharski’s parental rights, citing bonding problems between mother and son.

Kucharski appealed, but the judge went ahead and approved Jacob’s adoption by the Wordhouses.

The Supreme Court said the judge relied too heavily on the opinion of a therapist who had met with Kucharski and her son for an hour. The court also said the judge seemed unduly influenced by the Wordhouses’ relative wealth.

The justices said they realized the impact of their decision.

“There is no ideal result,” the court said. “There is no outcome that will avoid the imposition of suffering upon either the birth parent of this child or his present adoptive parents.”