20: Adoption

Case in Point: In re Clausen, 422 Mich. 648, 502 N.W.2d 649 (1993). Also known as the "Baby Jessica Case"

Synopsis

This case involved an interstate battle between Baby Jessica’s birth parents, Cara and Daniel Schmidt (who lived in Iowa), and her custodial parents, Roberta and Jan DeBoer (who lived in Michigan). Shortly after giving birth in Iowa, Cara relinquished her parental rights; Cara had named Scott Seefeldt as the baby’s father and he also relinquished his parental rights. Two weeks later, the DeBoers filed a petition in Iowa to adopt the child. That same day, Cara and Scott’s parental rights were terminated and the DeBoers were granted custody; the DeBoers then returned to Michigan. Nine days after the adoption petition was filed and approximately one month after the baby was born, Cara initiated a court action to revoke her relinquishment of her parental rights, disclosing that she had lied when she named Scott as the father and instead claiming Daniel Schmidt was the father. Daniel intervened in the action and nearly 9 months later it was determined that Daniel was indeed the biological father and that his parental rights had not been properly terminated. As a result, the DeBoers’ adoption petition was denied.

A series of court actions in Iowa and Michigan occurred over the next two years; during this time the baby remained with the DeBoers. More than 2 years after the baby was born, the DeBoers were ordered to transfer the custody of the baby to her birth parents in Iowa.

Excerpts

Following are excerpts from the dissenting opinion which demonstrate the difficulty the courts face in balancing parental rights and the best interest of the child in these types of cases (citations and references to other authorities within the opinion are omitted)

I would agree with the majority's analysis if the DeBoers had gone to Iowa, purchased a carload of hay from Cara Clausen, and then found themselves in litigation in Iowa with Daniel Schmidt, who also claimed an interest in the hay. It could then properly be said that the DeBoers "must be taken to have known" that, rightly or wrongly, the Iowa courts might rule against them, and they should, as gracefully as possible, accept an adverse decision of the Iowa courts. Michigan would then have had no interest in the outcome, and would routinely enforce a decree of the Iowa courts against the DeBoers.

But this is not a lawsuit concerning the ownership, the legal title, to a bale of hay. This is not the usual A v B lawsuit; Schmidts v DeBoers, or, if you prefer, DeBoers v Schmidts.

There is a C, the child, "a feeling, vulnerable, and [about to be] sorely put upon little human being": Baby Girl Clausen, also known as Jessica DeBoer, who will now be told, … that she is not Jessie, that the DeBoers are not Mommy and Daddy, that her name is Anna Lee Schmidt, and that the Schmidts, whom she has never met, are Mommy and Daddy. This child might, indeed, as the circuit judge essentially concluded, have difficulty trying that on for size at two and one-half years, she might, indeed, suffer an identity crisis. The judge said:

We had different degrees of testimony from the experts. All the way from permanent, serious damage she would never recover from, down to the child, who would recover in time. However, every expert testified that there would be serious traumatic injury to the child at this time.

The majority's analysis, that the DeBoers should have known when they filed their petition for adoption in Iowa that they might lose, overlooks that the child did not choose to litigate in Iowa, over four hundred miles from her only home, the legal and factual issues that would decide whether her world would be destroyed, and know that she might lose.

…

The majority's analysis focusing on the contest between the Schmidts and the DeBoers for possession of the child misfocuses on whether biological parents or persons acting as parents have the better "legal right," better legal title, not to a carload of hay, but to a child. The focus of the Parental Kidnapping Protection Act is not on the interests of the contestants' parents or persons acting as parents but, rather, on the best interests of the child.

The superior claim of the child to be heard in this case is grounded not just in law, but in basic human morality. Adults like the Schmidts and the DeBoers make choices in their lives, and society holds them responsible for their choices. When adults are forced to bear the consequences of their choices, however disastrous, at least their character and personality have been fully formed, and that character can provide the foundation for recovery, the will to go on.

The character and personality of a child two and one-half years old is just beginning to take shape. To visit the consequences of adult choices upon the child during the formative years of her life, and to force her to sort out the competing emotional needs of the Schmidts and DeBoers, is unnecessarily harsh and without legal justification. The PKPA does not require this result.

The PKPA was enacted to protect the child. This Court, by ignoring obvious issues concerning the welfare of the child and by focusing exclusively on the concerns of competing adults, as if this were a dispute about the vesting of contingent remainders, reduces the PKPA to a robot of legal formality with results that Congress did not intend.

Case in Point: In re Petition of John & Jane Doe to Adopt Baby Boy Janikova, 159 Ill. 2d 347, 638 N.E.2d 181 (1994). Also known as the "Baby Richard Case"

Synopsis

This case involved an interstate battle over “Baby Richard” that lasted over 3 years. Daniella Janikova became pregnant in June 1990. She was not married to the child’s biological father Otakar Kirchner. During the first 8 months of the pregnancy, Kirchner paid all of Daniella’s expenses. Shortly before the child was born, Kirchner returned to his native country of Czechoslovakia to care for his gravely ill grandmother. During this time, Kirchner’s aunt told Daniella that he had resumed a romantic relationship with another woman. Daniella cut ties with Kirchner and refused contact with him when he returned, other than to falsely tell him the child had died. She instead consented to the DeBoers’ adoption of the baby.

57 days after the child was born, Kirchner discovered that the baby was alive and had been placed for adoption. At that point, Kirchner filed a court action to contest the adoption. The trial court ruled against Kirchner, terminating his parental rights. The Supreme Court reversed the trial court and vacated the adoption order.

A series of court actions in Iowa and Michigan occurred over the next two years; during this time the baby remained with the DeBoers. More than 2 years after the baby was born, the DeBoers were ordered to transfer the custody of the baby to her birth parents in Iowa.

Excerpts

Following are excerpts from the supplemental opinion of the Justice who authored the majority opinion, written in response to the intense public criticism of the case. (citations and references to other authorities within the opinion are omitted)

On Thursday, June 16, 1994, this court reversed a decision by a divided appellate court which had affirmed certain adoption proceedings in the circuit court of Cook County. Our reversal was the result of the failure of the courts below to correctly apply Illinois law in terminating the natural father's parental rights. This cause is now before the court on petitions for rehearing filed by the adoptive parents and the guardian ad litem for the child.

I have been a judge for over 23 years. In that time, I have seldom before worked on a case that involved the spread of so much misinformation, nor one which dealt with as straightforward an application of law to fact.

As was made clear in the majority opinion, a conspiracy was undertaken to deny the natural father any knowledge of his son's existence. It began when the biological mother, 8½ months pregnant, was misinformed that the father, her fiancé, had left her for another woman. She left their shared home and, at the encouragement of a social worker, agreed to give up her child. The social worker called her personal attorney, who contacted the adoptive mother (that attorney's friend and employee). At the behest of the adoptive parents and their attorney, the mother gave birth at a different hospital than she and the father had planned to avoid the father's intervention; the mother surrendered the baby to strangers four days after his birth; and then falsely told the father that the child had died. All of this occurred in the space of less than three weeks.

The father did not believe the mother, and he immediately began an intensive and persistent search and inquiry to learn the truth and locate the child. On the 57th day following the child's birth, the father learned of his son's existence and of the pending adoption. On that day, he hired a lawyer and contested the adoption of his son by strangers. One may reasonably ask, What more could he have done? What more should he have done? The answer is that he did all that he could and should do.

The majority opinion pointed out that the adoptive parents should have relinquished the baby at that time. That is to say, on the 57th day. Instead of that, however, they were able to procure an entirely erroneous ruling from a trial judge that allowed the adoption to go forward. The father's only remedy at that stage was a legal appeal which he took. He is not the cause of the delay in this case. It was the adoptive parents' decision to prolong this litigation through a long and ultimately fruitless appeal. Now, the view has been expressed that the passage of time warrants their retention of the child; that it would not be fair to the child to return him to his natural parents, now married to each other, after the adoptive parents have delayed justice past the child's third birthday.

If … the best interests of the child is to be the determining factor in child custody cases, persons seeking babies to adopt might profitably frequent grocery stores and snatch babies from carts when the parent is looking the other way. Then, if custody proceedings can be delayed long enough, they can assert that they have a nicer home, a superior education, a better job or whatever, and that the best interests of the child are with the baby snatchers. Children of parents living in public housing or other conditions deemed less than affluent and children with single parents might be considered particularly fair game. The law, thankfully, is otherwise.

…

The best interest of the child standard is not to be denigrated. It is real. However, it is not triggered until it has been validly determined that the child is available for adoption. And, a child is not available for adoption until the rights of his natural parents have been properly terminated. ….

Columnist Bob Greene apparently does not care. Rather, columnist Greene has used this unfortunate controversy to stimulate readership and generate a series of syndicated newspaper columns in the Chicago Tribune and other papers that are both false and misleading. In so doing, he has wrongfully cried "fire" in a crowded theatre, and has needlessly alarmed other adoptive parents into ill-founded concerns that their own adoption proceedings may be in jeopardy. In support of his position, Greene has stirred up contempt against the Supreme Court as an institution, concluding one of his columns by referring to all of the Justices with the curse,

…

In support of his objective, Greene brings to bear the tools of the demagogue, namely, incomplete information, falsity, half-truths, character assassination and spurious argumentation. He has conducted a steady assault on my abilities as a judge, headlining one of his columns "The Sloppiness of Justice Heiple." Another was entitled "Supreme Injustice for a Little Boy." He has shown my picture in his columns with bylines reading, respectively, "Justice Heiple: Ruling takes boy from home," and "James D. Heiple: No justice for a child."

Make no mistake about it. These are acts of journalistic terrorism. These columns are designed to discredit me as a judge and the Supreme Court as a dispenser of justice by stirring up disrespect and hatred among the general population.

…

As for the child, age three, it is to be expected that there would be an initial shock, even a longing for a time in the absence of the persons whom he had viewed as parents. This trauma will be overcome, however, as it is every day across this land by children who suddenly find their parents separated by divorce or lost to them through death. It will not be an insurmountable trauma for a three-year-old child to be returned, at last, to his natural parents who want to raise him as their own. It will work itself out in the fullness of time. As for the adoptive parents, they will have to live with their pain and the knowledge that they wrongfully deprived a father of his child past the child's third birthday. They and their lawyer brought it on themselves.

This much is clear. Adoptive parents who comply with the law may feel secure in their adoptions. Natural parents may feel secure in their right to raise their own children. If there is a tragedy in this case, as has been suggested, then that tragedy is the wrongful breakup of a natural family and the keeping of a child by strangers without rights. We must remember that the purpose of an adoption is to provide a home for a child, not a child for a home.