Father frustrated by Utah law closer to getting daughter back

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DENVER - Over the past four years, Rob Manzanares has made many visits to the courthouse.
"It's getting a little hard," he said Friday.
He's been to so many hearings, it is hard to keep track.
"Oh my goodness, I think is 12 or 13 times we've been to court over this matter," he said.
Manzanares is fighting to be a dad to his biological daughter. He says he is fighting what feels like a system of injustice.
What happens in Denver Courtroom 2F on Friday matters to fathers like him all over the country.
Carie Terry is the birth mother of their daughter. A Utah Supreme Court justice said Terry deceived the court and Manzanares by secretly planning to go to Utah and have their baby. She didn't tell him about the birth and then gave her up for adoption to her brother and sister-in-law without his consent. She did that knowing Manzanares has already filed for his parental rights before the child was born.
The Utah Supreme Court recently ruled in Manzanares's favor, sending the case back to Colorado. That is what prompted Friday's hearing.
"I am encouraged, but we are still not at the ultimate goal. That is for me to have custody of her, she is my daughter," he said.
For four years, his daughter has lived with one family in Utah. The attorney for the child's adoptive parents argues it is in her best interest to stay with them despite all legal issues before her birth and since.
Manzanares's lawyer, John Hedrick, calls it an illegal adoption. He says it cannot, by law, stand.
"Rob has never consented to this adoption. The adoptive parents aren't adoptive parents because Utah would still need his consent," Hedrick said.
Terry was at the hearing in Denver on Friday, but she did not want to talk publically about the case. Her lawyer has said, in a statement, that she made the best decisions at that time for her daughter. She is against any disruption of her living situation.
Wes Hutchins is the president of the Utah Adoption Council and a lawyer. He says Utah law stacks the deck against unmarried biological dad. He says there are birth mothers exploiting it.
"The idea that birth mothers can travel from any other state and be in Utah for two or three days and give birth to a child and then leave the state with the sole purpose of cutting off the rights of the birth father's has to stop," Hutchins said.
The hearing ended with another one set. The next could determine custody of the little girl. Manzanares is optimistic.
"Every step now is a court hearing closer to maybe the ultimate goal of having in my arms," he said.
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