"If you shut up truth and bury it underground, it will but grow, and gather to itself such explosive power that the day it bursts through it will blow up everything in its way."
Emile Zola
French Novelist, Critic, Activist
1840-1902
Showing posts with label Dave Hardy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dave Hardy. Show all posts
Monday, April 2, 2012
Sunday, March 11, 2012
Saturday, February 11, 2012
HB308
This past week has been very exciting for progress in finally changing the adoption laws in the state of Utah regarding unwed father's rights. Although, HB308 didn't ultimately fix every problem with the current law, it was a great step to show the legislative that there is major problem with the current law. On Monday, the committee over HB308 decided to put a hold on the bill until Thursday to give more time to research some questions that were brought up.
On Thursday, the courtroom was full of emotional testimony and truly showed the major flaws that are currently in the adoption laws. I will be posting videos of testimony from David Hardy, Jenny Graham, Dan Deuel, Lisa Harris, Donna Pope, and a few others.
The committee voted 5-3 that this bill needs to be put on hold until the Summer to get more of the major kinks worked out. They saw the great need for reform and wanted to get it right, not just put a bill into place that wouldn't truly solve the problem at hand.
Although, this bill was a step in the right direction it ultimately still did not take fraud out of the law. We have been working with Wes Hutchins, President of the Utah Adoption Council, as well as the sponsor of this bill Christine Watkins of Price, to suggest ways we can make this bill truly effective to protect father's rights.
Wes Hutchins, an adoptive father, and an adoption attorney, has become a strong advocate for us in helping get the laws changed. He will be on the radio on Monday, February 13th, 2012 at 9:00 AM on radio station KCPW, NPR 88.3 FM, 105.3 FM. He will be talking about the bill, adoption reform, the ruling on the Robert Manzanares Case, etc. Please tune in or call in to discuss this topic.
Thank you again for all of your support. We are making a difference!
On Thursday, the courtroom was full of emotional testimony and truly showed the major flaws that are currently in the adoption laws. I will be posting videos of testimony from David Hardy, Jenny Graham, Dan Deuel, Lisa Harris, Donna Pope, and a few others.
The committee voted 5-3 that this bill needs to be put on hold until the Summer to get more of the major kinks worked out. They saw the great need for reform and wanted to get it right, not just put a bill into place that wouldn't truly solve the problem at hand.
Although, this bill was a step in the right direction it ultimately still did not take fraud out of the law. We have been working with Wes Hutchins, President of the Utah Adoption Council, as well as the sponsor of this bill Christine Watkins of Price, to suggest ways we can make this bill truly effective to protect father's rights.
Wes Hutchins, an adoptive father, and an adoption attorney, has become a strong advocate for us in helping get the laws changed. He will be on the radio on Monday, February 13th, 2012 at 9:00 AM on radio station KCPW, NPR 88.3 FM, 105.3 FM. He will be talking about the bill, adoption reform, the ruling on the Robert Manzanares Case, etc. Please tune in or call in to discuss this topic.
Thank you again for all of your support. We are making a difference!
Monday, January 16, 2012
Tomorrow
We will be in court tomorrow at 1:30 PM in front of Judge Christiansen. Please keep us in your thoughts and prayers that he will see the injustice occurring and keep our case alive.
THANK YOU!
Monday, January 2, 2012
A glimmer of hope
We have a small glimmer of hope... We have an upcoming court date. January 17th at 1:30 PM in front of Judge Christiansen. We finally will be heard, and we hope that he feels as disgusted with opposing counsel on part of LDS Family Services, David Hardy, and the adoptive couple, Larry Jenkins, as we do. We have faith that he will do what is right, and intervene in the adoption, and call for an evidentiary hearing again. We really have been beat down these past few weeks, and really need a ray of sunshine.
If anyone would like to attend, please contact us and we can provide the details.
Thanks again for all for your continued support through these trying times.
If anyone would like to attend, please contact us and we can provide the details.
Thanks again for all for your continued support through these trying times.
Monday, December 26, 2011
Day 2 of Salt Lake Tribune Adoption Articles
Utah adoption law: model for nation or unjust burden?
Rights • Fathers have limited opportunity to fight the system.
Paul Fraughton | The Salt Lake Tribune David McConkie, who works for LDS Family Services, talks about programs and policies behind putative father registries.
More than three years after a Utah judge ruled he had failed to protect his parental rights, Rob Manzanares is still fighting for custody of his now nearly four-year-old daughter.
He has met her just once. The girl’s adoptive parents brought her to a court hearing in December 2009 and, before it began, Manzanares stood in a tiny meeting room and held his daughter for the first time.
“I didn’t want to cry too much,” he said. “I didn’t want to scare my daughter.”
At that meeting, Manzanares said he was offered a deal: Drop the legal fight and “there’s an opportunity to have visitation.” He refused and, more than a year after a hearing before the Utah Supreme Court, is still waiting a decision in a case that highlights how competing interests of unwed fathers and social policy can complicate adoption.
“It is my flesh and blood, she’s my child,” said Manzanares, 34, of Colorado. “I should have a right to raise my child first, over anybody.”
Related story • Stopping an adoption: In Utah, fathers rarely win • http://bit.ly/uT51Tc
That is not the way the law sees it, as a Utah Supreme Court justice argued bluntly in 2007:Men who father a child outside of marriage must take steps to assert a legal relationship to a child or “risk losing it altogether.”
That “biology plus” view is enshrined in a handful of U.S. Supreme Court decisions, as well as adoption laws in Utah and numerous states. Utah’s adoption law explicitly puts men on notice that sex outside of marriage may result in a pregnancy and an adoption. It is up to him alone, the law says, to protect any claim to a child born in those circumstances.
Perhaps it is due to a lack of awareness, financial resources or simple disinterest, but few do. Some men who have tried to follow Utah law say the state purposefully makes it difficult to comply.
“It is these rare cases where you have a mom who, for whatever reason, wants to cut dad out of the decision making and a very active dad who wants to participate that makes the news and makes the law,” said Lisa Kelly, a University of Washington Law School professor and co-author of an adoption law textbook.
They may be rare, but such cases have surfaced with surprising frequency recently in Utah, where marriage is widely seen as a sacred institution and, in adoption cases, rights of unmarried fathers are narrow.
Unwed fathers had no custody rights at all until 1970, when the Utah Supreme Court found that holding a man financially responsible for his illegitimate offspring also entitled him to “custody and control as against all but the mother.”
Though just 10.7 percent of all births in the U.S. that year were to unmarried women, a seismic cultural change regarding illegitimacy was already in motion. As more women opted to keep their babies, states began to lean more heavily on unwed fathers to provide financial support for those offspring. At the same time, it left them out of most adoption decisions.
Then came a ground-breaking 1972 U.S. Supreme Court finding that a state could not remove three children from their father’s care after their mother’s death without a hearing simply because the parents, together for 18 years, had never married. In subsequent rulings, the court recognized Constitutional rights of unwed fathers who have a substantial relationship with their children but held that, sans a legal or substantial relationship, states could require such fathers to take steps, such as signing with a registry, to be entitled to notice of proceedings.
Utah established such a requirement in 1975 and strengthened it two decades later in sweeping revisions to the state’s adoption law. Reflecting the predominately Mormon Legislature’s view, one lawmaker observed during debate that “it is wrong to have children outside of marriage,” according to a 2009 article in the Journal of Law & Family Studies. A handwritten note on drafting instructions for the legislation read: “Change adoption law as we know it and test the bounds of Constitutional protection for biological fathers.”
As revised in 1995, the law says fraud by the mother — hiding a pregnancy or a plan to give birth in or pursue adoption in Utah — does not excuse an unwed father’s failure to act. However, it allows an out-of-state father to argue he had no prior knowledge his child would be born in or adopted in Utah, acted within 20 days of discovering the fact to comply with state law and previously protected his rights in his own state.
In Manzanares’ case, a Utah judge found Carie Terry, his daughter’s mother, deliberately deceived him and concealed information from judges in Utah and Colorado. Despite that, Manzanares’ attempt to derail the adoption failed because, by his own admission, he feared Terry might give birth in Utah but failed to take timely action here, the judge said.
“We believe the district court ultimately came to the correct decision,” said attorney David Hardy, who represented Terry at a late stage in the case.
Attorney David McConkie, who helped craft the legislation, calls Utah’s strict law a model for the nation.
The law requires a two-step process that includes filing with the registry and initiating a paternity action in court, along with submission of a detailed child care plan — though there’s no guidance on how to satisfy that mandate. One father who vowed to “assume all financial responsibilities,” for example, fell short of the mark. The Utah Court of Appeals ruled he had failed to specifically say how he’d earn that money or “identify who will care for the child while he is working to earn that income.”
Utah’s law is aimed at balancing the interests of all parties — the state, the mother, the biological father, the infant, the adoptive parents, said McConkie, now manager of children’s services at LDS Family Services, which arranges adoptions through its 62 offices in the U.S. and abroad and is owned by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
“There’s going to be cases where it doesn’t work very well, but you can’t craft a law around a specific case,” said McConkie. “You’ve got to craft a law that meets society’s interests and the parties’ interests more generally.”
What interests? Privacy, speedily finding homes for infants, ensuring those placements are final, and, most important of all, determining what’s best for a child, he said. Yes, interests sometimes conflict, he said.
“The mother has one way that she would like to go and the father has a way that he would like to go,” McConkie said. “And that’s a huge issue in this type of legislation — what do you do with this conflict of interest?”
Terry, for instance, testified in a Utah court hearing that she repeatedly told Manzanares that, despite his objections, she thought their child needed the “two-parent home” that adoption would provide “versus a hostile, stressful, anger situation.”
Critics such as Erik T. Smith of Ohio, a nationally recognized expert in putative father issues, say Utah’s answer has been to make the “window of opportunity as small as it can be” for unwed fathers to assert rights. But an even bigger problem, according to Smith, is most unmarried men don’t have the slightest inkling what the law requires — and McConkie doesn’t disagree with him.
At present, there is no information about the registry on the websites of the Utah Department of Health or Office of Vital Statistics, the state division charged with maintaining the registry, and the office won’t mail forms to fathers or their representatives, requiring them instead to appear in person.
“The thing I think is the hardest about Utah law, and I’m sensitive to this, is that fathers don’t know about it,” said McConkie. “I don’t know how you solve that problem, unless it’s advertised more.”
Another issue, as numerous unmarried fathers who don’t live in Utah have discovered: a judge in his home state may make a paternity finding but then be unable to address custody because the child resides and is part of an adoption proceeding here. As of 2010, Utah law specifically says a paternity order doesn’t entitle an out-of-state father to participate in such hearings, a change that came after several rulings in Manzanares’ tangled case.
Manzanares filed a paternity action in Colorado on Jan. 16, 2008, more than a month before his daughter’s birth. On Feb. 20, 2008, the day a hearing was set on the matter, Terry called the court and said she was unable to attend because she was in Utah visiting her sick father. What Terry didn’t disclose is that she’d given birth prematurely in Utah three days earlier and that very morning had signed papers before a Utah judge relinquishing the baby.
Nine days later, after the child’s birth was revealed, the Colorado court granted paternity, rights and responsibility for the infant to Manzanares. In July, a different Utah judge ordered the infant turned over to Manzanares, only to reverse the decision a week later and order another hearing. While the judge later vacated the court order approving Terry’s consent to the adoption, he ruled in August 2009 that Manzanares had not adequately protected his parental rights here, triggering his appeal.
Such lengthy court battles are typical and, some say, may erect a final, insurmountable hurdle for unwed fathers: If a father is found to have preserved his rights, a court then weighs his parental fitness and the child’s best interests, including the emotional and psychological impact of disrupting bonds between a child and the only parents he or she has ever known — although the Utah Supreme Court said in a 2007 decision such bonds are “legally irrelevant.”
The slow process prompted the author of a 2010 article in the Journal of Law and Family Studies to urge lawmakers to expedite adoption hearings, as done in child welfare cases.
Utah attorney Phil Lowry, who represented a North Carolina father in his failed custody bid, doesn’t expect solutions to such problems any time soon. Unwed fathers are an “under-represented group of individuals. And there are going to continue be problems for them and it is only going to get more aggravated as marriage becomes more fragmented,” he said.
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Editor’s note
This is the second of four stories examining adoption in the context of unmarried fathers’ rights under Utah law.
Coming Tuesday • The as yet untold case of Jake Strickland, whose story painfully illustrates there is no defense in Utah law for fathers who may be misled by a mother or agency.
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By the numbers: A look at 2010
52,164 • Utah Births
9,891 • Utah births to unmarried women
41 percent • U.S. births to unmarried women
19 percent • Utah births to unmarried women
30 • Filings in Utah’s putative father registry
1.3 percent • Estimate of unmarried women who choose adoption, U.S.
Source: Utah Office of Vital Statistics; U.S. Census; Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; Salt Lake Tribune reports
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LDS Family Services
The agency, a party in at least 10 of the 27 high court decisions reviewed by The Salt Lake Tribune, is owned by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The church urges unmarried women to pursue adoption because they are generally unable to provide a stable, nurturing environment and because “unwed parents are not able to provide the blessings of the sealing covenant.” The faith believes that covenant ties a family together on earth and in heaven.
Excerpts from Utah court rulings
“It is conceivable, however, that a situation may arise when it is impossible for the father to file the required notice of paternity prior to the statutory bar, through no fault of his own. Due process requires that he be permitted to show that he was not afforded a reasonable opportunity to comply with the statute.”
Utah Supreme Court, 1980
“Those who conceive children outside the bonds of marriage may be loving parents, but experience teaches that the number of illegitimate children born each year contribute disproportionately to many of the serious social problems with which society must cope.”
Utah Supreme Court, 1984
Utah’s law “was not created to encourage a ‘race’ for placement to cut off the rights of fathers who are identified and present, but who are hours late in registering their claims because of ignorance of their statutory obligation.”
Utah Supreme Court dissent, 1984
[The statute] “does not distinguish between fathers in a monogamous relationship who are led to believe mother, father, and baby will form a family unit, and ne’er-do-wells who have nothing to do with the mother after a casual fling that culminates in conception.”
Utah Court of Appeals dissent, 2002
“We also hold that the phone call made to Mr. O’Dea in which Ms. Olea stated ‘I am in Utah’ gave him adequate inquiry notice that a qualifying circumstance existed” and he needed to comply with Utah law.
Utah Supreme Court, 2009
“Because the Natural Father failed to file his paternity action within the time required by New Mexico law, he did not establish his status as an acknowledged father, and the later paternity order was of no force or effect.”
Utah Supreme Court, 2009
© 2011 The Salt Lake Tribune
Sunday, December 25, 2011
Day 1 of Salt Lake Tribune Adoption Stories
Stopping an adoption: In Utah, unwed fathers rarely win
Does Utah make it intentionally difficult for unmarried biological fathers to protect their paternal rights? If a half-century of legal precedent is any indication, fathers in this state rarely win.
Leah Hogsten | The Salt Lake Tribune Ramsey Shaud (left) of Crestview, Fla., attended a Utah Supreme Court hearing with his attorney Daniel Drage (right) in September. The court is weighing whether Shaud met requirements of Utah's adoption law in regards to his daughter, born Jan. 15, 2010.
Ramsey Shaud admits the circumstances were not perfect. He wasn’t even sure he loved Shasta B. Tew.
Still, when Shaud learned in 2009 that Tew was pregnant as a result of their casual relationship but didn’t want to be a mother, he stepped up.
Shaud told Tew he wanted to be a dad and would raise the child, with help from his family.
But Tew, then 19, apparently didn’t like that idea and, as she began pursuing adoptive parents for the coming baby, Shaud moved quickly to protect his parental rights. Shaud, who was 22, learned he needed to sign with the Putative Father Registry in Florida, their home state, so he would be notified of any proposed adoption. It turned out to be a simple process: He printed out a form he found online and sent it in, along with the $20 filing fee.
Five months later, Tew’s mother hand-delivered to Shaud a terse three-line note about his ex-girlfriend’s plan to visit Arizona and Utah for the holidays. Shaud feared — rightfully, he says — that the real intent of the trip west was to give birth in a state where he was less likely to be able to assert any claim to the child.
That same day, Shaud had no trouble finding a form for Arizona’s registry online; he printed it, filled it out and mailed it in. But despite hours spent dissecting the Utah Department of Health’s website, which he figured was the logical place to look, Shaud was unable to locate a similar form or information about what he needed to do here.
That’s because Utah, unlike most states with registries aimed at unmarried fathers, doesn’t make a form or directions on how to proceed available online. In fact, the phrase “putative father,” used in state law to describe an unwed biological father, isn’t mentioned anywhere on the websites of the health department or Office of Vital Records and Statistics, the agency charged with maintaining Utah’s registry. Utah law requires that forms be made available through local health departments, but office policy is not to do so, according to Director Janice Houston.
“The state makes the form available at the [Utah] Department of Health, but you have to pick it up in person, which is impossible for a father who lives out of state,” said Joshua Peterman, an attorney who has three active cases involving unmarried fathers.
Shaud, a resident of Crestview, Fla., is one of a string of men who say Utah intentionally makes it difficult to protect their rights when they oppose adoption.In fact, unmarried fathers face a hodgepodge of approaches across the country regarding their rights. A Salt Lake Tribune review found Utah is not the only state where determining how to protect those rights is difficult — a problem some experts say would be solved by creating a national putative-father registry.
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‘Draconian consequences’ • After he failed to turn up helpful information on the Utah website, Shaud searched the Internet for “how to prevent adoption in Utah” and discovered a website created by Cody O’Dea of Wyoming, detailing his own and numerous other fathers’ unsuccessful fights to stop or undo adoptions in Utah.
“I thought, ‘Oh geez,’” said Shaud.
His next step was to hire an attorney and engage in what has so far proved to be an unsuccessful effort to undo the adoption of his daughter, who was born in Utah on Jan. 15, 2010, and whom he has never seen. The Utah Supreme Court heard an appeal in Shaud’s case on Sept. 6 and it will likely be months before the court issues a decision.
“I just want my little girl more than anything,” said Shaud, whose experience spurred him to go to college to pursue a law degree. “I never thought it would come down to this.”
If the court’s past rulings are any indication, Shaud’s odds of success are slim.
Utah requires unmarried fathers to strictly follow a process that includes filing a paternity action, registering with the putative father registry, providing a detailed child care plan and paying or attempting to pay pregnancy-related expenses. Most often, fathers lose because they don’t meet Utah deadlines, as happened in Shaud’s case. A lower court judge ruled his consent to his daughter’s adoption was not required because he didn’t meet a filing deadline — a delay Shaud argues was caused by Utah’s four-day workweek and a federal holiday.
But some of the more than 25 higher court rulings in Utah since 1959 have turned on other missteps in the process, including some one justice described as “very minor issues of noncompliance.”
In 2008, Nikolas Thurnwald lost his case because he didn’t get an amended court document notarized or explain who would tend the child while he was at work. That same year, a father identified in court documents only as “C.C.D” declared he would assume full financial responsibility for the child but lost because he did not get a court order of child support or detail what would happen to the child if he were deported.
“There is no question that Utah has the most restrictive laws on asserting an unmarried father’s rights,” said Clark Nielsen, a Salt Lake City attorney who has worked with unmarried fathers in the past. “I can see there are some advantages to that as to what the state perceives as its interests and getting fathers to step up to the plate and so on.”
But, Nielsen added, “It has become so restrictive that people choose to come to the state to cut off the boyfriend or whatever, and that has draconian consequences.”
On Dec. 15, attorneys representing John Wyatt of Woodbridge, Va., filed a petition with the U.S. Supreme Court asking it to review two questions related to his failed bid to stop his daughter’s adoption in Utah. The petition asks the court to consider whether Utah violated a federal parental kidnapping law by ignoring custody rulings issued in Virginia and whether Wyatt’s constitutional rights were violated by denying him an opportunity to object to his daughter’s adoption, particularly given his timely compliance with his own state’s putative father law.
“The birth of the child and the whole plan for adoption was hidden from John — in fact, he was misdirected as to what was going on,” said Stan Phillips, an adoption attorney in Tyson’s Corner, Va., and co-counsel on the writ filed by the Washington, D.C.-based firm Crowell and Moring. “In Utah, birth fathers must come up with every possible argument before you even know what is going on in the case, and that is just unconstitutional.”
Wyatt also has filed a federal lawsuit against Act of Love, the adoption agency; Larry Jenkins, the agency’s attorney; and the adoptive parents, alleging a vast conspiracy exists in Utah to take children from unwed biological fathers. Jenkins, who is listed in court records as an attorney for the agency or adoptive parents in one-third of the cases reviewed by The Salt Lake Tribune for this series, declined to comment because of the lawsuit.
Adoption proponents would like more state laws, as well as any federal law, to mirror Utah’s approach, as Daniel Reese, former development director for the National Council For Adoption, noted in a 2006 speech in Salt Lake City: “While we must respect the rights of biological fathers, we must find the way for a quick and permanent solution for these children . . . Putative father registries like the one in Utah offer the best solution.”
Utah lawmakers first enacted a statute requiring putative fathers to file a notice asserting their parental rights in 1975. The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed the constitutionality of such registries in 1983, upholding a New York law that was similar to Utah’s adoption statute.
A decade later, more state legislatures moved to enact putative father registries after a pair of heart-wrenching, protracted legal battles over infants handed over to adoptive parents at birth and then, years later, returned to their biological parents.
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Registries vary • Despite the increase in registries, figuring out what to do in some states to receive notice of an adoption proceeding is like running a marathon obstacle course; even experts have come to different conclusions when trying to decipher state laws. The Salt Lake Tribune reviewed websites, statutes and contacted officials in some states to compile its own breakdown of state laws and assess availability of information.
The Tribune found there are 30 states with registries maintained by a government agency or court; most provide online information and forms. Utah is among the handful of states that do not provide that easy access. In most states with a registry, an unwed father must file only with the appropriate state agency; in a few — such as Utah, Idaho and Missouri — the unmarried father must both register and initiate a court action, which often brings the expense of hiring an attorney.
In states with registries, if an unmarried father fails to act, he loses any right to contest an adoption. Utah law considers an unmarried father to be on notice, from the moment he engages in a sexual relationship with a woman, that a pregnancy and adoption may occur and that it’s his duty alone to protect his rights.
But public awareness of registries and their role in protecting rights is often lacking.
“You can’t sign a registry if you don’t know you are supposed to,” said Adam Pertman, executive director of the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute, based in New York. He adds that, by design or happenstance, registries touted as protecting unmarried fathers’ rights “instead appear, in practice, to often cut men out who might have been interested in being let in.”
Shaud’s home state of Florida has one of the most father-friendly approaches in the nation, with its registry listed on the state’s Office of Vital Statistics website and a printable form available in English, Spanish and Creole. Information about the registry must be disseminated via health class curricula, hospitals, adoption agencies, libraries and even at motor vehicle offices.
But proponents of a national registry say the process is far more difficult for unmarried fathers in Utah and many other states — and can be nearly insurmountable for a man who has no knowledge of when or where a mother has given birth.
At present, there is no uniformity to how unmarried fathers are referenced, what these registries are called or who oversees them. The unmarried father, for instance, may be referred to as alleged, presumed, reputed, natural or putative. A registry may be administered by a human resources or a health department, the state’s child welfare agency or, as in Utah, Arizona and Georgia, the office of vital records. In South Carolina, the registry itself is known as the “Responsible Father Registry”; in Iowa, it’s a “Declaration of Paternity Registry.” In Arizona, the form is a “Notice of Claim of Paternity”; New York calls it a “Notice of Intent to Claim Paternity of a Child Born Out of Wedlock.” Oregon maintains a “Notification File” for petitions in “filiation proceedings.”
In states with registries, statutes use similar language to place the burden on an unwed father to act in a specific time frame to protect his rights and receive notice of any adoption proceeding. But deadlines vary widely. In Utah, a father must act prior to the mother giving consent or relinquishing the baby, which can happen 24 hours after giving birth, or by the first business day after the child’s birth, at which point the placement is final. In Michigan it is before birth, while New Mexico sets the deadline at 10 days following birth; Texas requires action no later than 31 days after birth.
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A national approach • This disparate approach leads people like Mary Beck, a law professor at the University of Missouri, to advocate for a national registry.
“That is the only way we can protect fathers and adoptions in interstate adoptions,” said Beck, who has drafted statutory language for some states to use in creating registries. “The national registry is intended to address problems arising when conception, birth, placement and adoption filings occur in any combination in more than one state.”
Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., has introduced legislation to create a national putative father registry in Congress twice, only to have it stall in committee. She’ll try again this year, according to staff, and plans to draw more attention to the effort.
Mark Demaray, president of the American Academy of Adoption Attorneys, said within the adoption community, “most people would like some certainty, and that is what’s lacking without some uniform registry.”
“If a guy wants to step up and take responsibility, he should have a path,” Demaray said. “There’s not much of a downside to it, in most of our views [though] it might change the law in some states, like Utah, where it might make it more difficult to do an adoption.”
Shaud counts himself among such responsible fathers,saying that had there been a national registry in place when his case began, “all this could have been resolved.”
The Center for Family Policy & Research said a national registry gives even greater privacy and safety to a birth mother “because she does not have to identify the possible father nor inform the father of her pregnancy” — an important consideration in cases of rape, abuse or instances when a father may be married to someone else.
But the registry has opponents, including Erik L. Smith, a paralegal and third-year law student in Ohio who became an expert on the issue after waging his own custody fight.
For one thing, he is dubious because groups like the National Council for Adoption, whom he considers “anti-father,” support it. A national registry would likely have “too many loopholes and be “essentially unenforceable,” Smith said.
“I don’t trust it,” he said. “If a national registry can really work, I’m all for it. But enacting a national registry that does not work will do more harm than good.”
brooke@sltrib.com
Twitter: Brooke4Trib
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What Utah law requires of unmarried, or so-called putative, fathers
From within Utah
A birth mother may consent to an adoption or relinquish an infant as soon as 24 hours after giving birth, and the decision is final. An unmarried father residing in Utah who wants to protect his parental rights must do the following either before that happens or, if the birth occurs on a weekend or holiday, within one business day:
File a paternity action in a Utah court stating he is “willing and able” to have full custody and will pay child support, pregnancy-related and childbirth expenses. It also must detail a plan for the child’s care.
File a “notice of commencement of paternity proceeding” with the Office of Vital Statistics.
Prove he paid for a reasonable share of the mother’s pregnancy-related and childbirth expenses, unless he is able to show he did not know about the pregnancy or was not allowed to pay expenses.
From outside Utah
An unmarried father living in another state has 20 days from his discovery that a birth occurred in Utah or the mother executes consent or relinquishment to intervene, provided he proves that:
He did not know and could not have known through “exercise of reasonable diligence” that the child or the child’s mother resided in Utah on a temporary or permanent basis during the pregnancy; the mother intended to give birth in Utah; child was born in Utah; or the mother planned to give consent or relinquish her rights in Utah or under Utah laws.
He complied fully with the putative-father or adoption law in the state where conception occurred or where he last knew the mother resided.
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Editor’s note
This is the first of four stories examining adoption in the context of unmarried fathers’ rights under Utah law.
© 2011 The Salt Lake Tribune
Saturday, December 17, 2011
Major Update:Devastating News
Many things and turn of events have occurred over the past few months in the on-going battle to fight for Jackson. I am going to try my best to bring you up to speed. Unfortunately, we have experienced many delays, set backs, heartbreaks, and loss of faith in the judicial system throughout this process.
If you remember from previous posts, clear back on May 9th, 2011, Judge Christiansen, heard our case, and was in awe with the series of events that had occurred. He recognized that Jake had not filed timely, but could see that this was due to the fact that Whitney Pettersson had blatantly lied, committed fraud, and deceived him so that he could not file the proper paperwork to protect his rights as a father. He ordered DNA testing to be completed, and really felt strongly about enjoining both cases (our case and the potential adoption case), because he knew that the outcome was going to affect both parties. After major delays on opposing counsel and the adoptive couples part to take Jackson a.k.a Benjamin in for genetic testing, the results had come in. Jackson was 100% Jake's son. Our next court hearing was scheduled for August 16th to discuss these findings.
On August 15th, 2011, we received a very surprising and frustrating call from our attorney's office that the judge had a family emergency and court was canceled the following day. We didn't feel like everything was adding up and so we proceeded to go ahead and show up to court anyways. We discovered that the judge DID NOT have a family emergency and was actually in court ready to hear our case. To our dismay though, our attorney as well as opposing counsel did not show up. This caused some great concern for the judge and demanded a telephone conference to be held that day with him, our attorney and opposing counsel from LDS Family Services. In that telephone conference, the real truth came out, that Dave Hardy(opposing counsel) is the one who took it upon himself to actually decide to cancel the hearing because he said he did not have proper notice of the hearing. When in fact, he had confirmed with Jake and Jenny in their depositions, only 2 weeks prior of the court date. This again, was one of their delay tactics, to prolong anything from moving forward with this case, and Jackson getting older and older.
In the telephone conference, the judge was notified of the DNA tests proving Jake to be the father. He then again enjoined the two cases, because opposing counsel had refused to provide our attorney with any information regarding the adoption, such as the case #, what district that case was being heard and who was representing the prospective adoption couple. The judge demanded answers to be told about this crucial information so that things could move forward. It was soon discovered that their attorney was Larry Jenkins and they had a pending case up in 2nd District in Ogden, Utah in front Judge Kay. Judge Christiansen also ordered that this case be resolved with in one district, and the way that would be determined was by who filed their paperwork first, Jake or the prospective adoptive couple.
Well, after a few weeks after this conference call, we found out we had some good news coming our way. We filed FIRST. Jake filed on January 6th, 2011, the very next day he found out about the adoption occurring, and the prospective adoptive couple filed on January 28th, 2011, giving us jurisdiction in having both enjoining cases be heard in front of Judge Christiansen. This was a very big plus for us because he already ruled in our favor once with ordering the DNA test as well as he saw the dishonest behavior of LDS Family Services Legal counsel blatantly NOT show up on purpose. Judge Christiansen ordered an evidentiary hearing to be heard in front of him to have all of the convicting evidence be shared. Judge Christansen knew he had a hard decision coming before him because he knew FRAUD was wrote into the law, and said "If I sanction fraud in my court, I will be denying a biological father thee right to his son, but if I don't I rule against this prospective adoptive couple who has grown to love and bond with this child."
Since mid-August we had not had much activity gone on since that real break through. There had been a conference call with Dave Hardy, Larry Jenkins and our attorney discussing how they would move forward and that was it. Our attorney had been working to get a new court date with Judge Christiansen and was not having much luck with opposing counsel cooperating, again another DELAY tactic.
We had unresolved business from a motion we filed originally back in January and were ordered to go back in front of the commissioner, in September, who originally heard our case and really didn't make any progress, due to her ordering us to go back to Judge Christiansen.
We had become very ancy, that no progress was being made. Calls and emails daily were being made to our attorney to see if any new updates had been made. NOTHING.
Finally, Jenny truly wanted to reach out to the adoptive couple, LDS Family Services, Dave Hardy, and families and truly just let them know what they are doing to Jackson. They aren't doing this in the best interest of the child, they are doing this in the best interest of their pocketbook. Since she is not part of this pending case, she reached out to them all via written letters. They were sent out on November 15th, 2011 and all were confirmed received within 2-3 days. Jake, nor his attorney had any knowledge of this to protect anything with the current case.
Little did we know, Larry Jenkins and the prospective adoptive couple had been collaborating and in the works with Dave Hardy on how they could try to get this thing maneuvered and finalized.
On Thanksgiving day, we received the most devastating and heartbreaking news yet throughout this whole ordeal. Jenny's father, who through the grapevine, has some connections with the prospective adoptive couple, heard that the adoption had been FINALIZED. What? How is this possible you ask? We were wondering the same thing. We could not believe this news could be true. There was NO possible way that this could happen right? We had been enjoined with the adoption case 2 different times. Since it was a holiday, we had to wait 4 grueling days until Monday, when our attorneys office was open for business. We called and had to DELIVER the devastating news to OUR own attorney. He was astonished just as we were. He immediately began calling to Larry Jenkins, Dave Hardy, and LDS Family Services, and AGAIN received NO information. Our attorney, wrote a letter to Larry Jenkins, to our dismay replied with a response we could not believe.
He informed us, that he checked with the court in 2nd District, and since Jake was not part of this adoption did not need proper notification of this adoption proceeding to move forward and that his client's were able to FINALIZE the adoption. WHAT? WHAT? WHAT? He DISOBEYED, Judge Christiansen's orders TWICE to enjoin the adoption case and our case. Judge Christiansen enjoined the cases for this EXACT reason, because he did not want someone to be able to make a final decision without both parties being heard. Judge Christiansen even filed a motion to stay on the case back in October, to make sure that their were no movements in this case until they came back in front of him. He also informed us that his clients felt threatened and would take protective action from the court if the harassment didn't stop. Which is ridiculous they would even say such a thing. There was nothing threatening wrote in the letters, it was the absolute truth, and Jenny's opinion, which she clearly states over and over she is not threatening anyone.
We will be posting the letters that were written by Grandma Graham over the next few days.
We are still 100% fighting this, and are in the process to intervene with the adoption. We are currently still awaiting to get a court date to go back before Judge Christansen, to share with him the news, that opposing counsel does not care what he rules or his orders, because he is going to go behind his back, LIE, and FRAUDULENTLY, get this adoption to go through.
Larry Jenkins was able to use FRAUD to allow his client to make a STOLEN baby theirs. They have a child who they want to bless, and get sealed in the LDS temple, and they are doing this KNOWING that they were dishonest, to get this to ultimately go through. We really aren't quite sure what they are thinking. Do they really not realize that Jackson will be 18 and we will tell him EVERYTHING? He will know the absolute truth and know that his so called parents took him against his will? They will have their world crashing down sooner than later. Time is flying by fast. Jackson is almost 1 years old. We only have to wait 17 more years to see our sweet boy.
If you feel as outraged about this as we do and did, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE, voice your opinions to the adoptive couple, Larry Jenkins, LDS Family Services, Utah General Attorney Mark Shurtleff, and all of the Legislators in UTAH. This truly has to end. We can not have corrupt people creating the laws that deal with children, representing the laws that deal with children, and breaking the laws that deal with children.
Tune in tomorrow for Day 1 of the letter sequence. Also, a 4 page spread will be running in the Salt Lake Tribune, about the Utah adoption practices, ethics, and our story, beginning on Christmas Day.
Jackson, we have a had a few rough weeks with the holidays around and your birthday coming around the corner. Don't worry we have not forgotten about you and have not given up. We love you so much and will continue to fight until you are home with us and justice is serviced.
-Love,
Aunt Heidi
If you remember from previous posts, clear back on May 9th, 2011, Judge Christiansen, heard our case, and was in awe with the series of events that had occurred. He recognized that Jake had not filed timely, but could see that this was due to the fact that Whitney Pettersson had blatantly lied, committed fraud, and deceived him so that he could not file the proper paperwork to protect his rights as a father. He ordered DNA testing to be completed, and really felt strongly about enjoining both cases (our case and the potential adoption case), because he knew that the outcome was going to affect both parties. After major delays on opposing counsel and the adoptive couples part to take Jackson a.k.a Benjamin in for genetic testing, the results had come in. Jackson was 100% Jake's son. Our next court hearing was scheduled for August 16th to discuss these findings.
On August 15th, 2011, we received a very surprising and frustrating call from our attorney's office that the judge had a family emergency and court was canceled the following day. We didn't feel like everything was adding up and so we proceeded to go ahead and show up to court anyways. We discovered that the judge DID NOT have a family emergency and was actually in court ready to hear our case. To our dismay though, our attorney as well as opposing counsel did not show up. This caused some great concern for the judge and demanded a telephone conference to be held that day with him, our attorney and opposing counsel from LDS Family Services. In that telephone conference, the real truth came out, that Dave Hardy(opposing counsel) is the one who took it upon himself to actually decide to cancel the hearing because he said he did not have proper notice of the hearing. When in fact, he had confirmed with Jake and Jenny in their depositions, only 2 weeks prior of the court date. This again, was one of their delay tactics, to prolong anything from moving forward with this case, and Jackson getting older and older.
In the telephone conference, the judge was notified of the DNA tests proving Jake to be the father. He then again enjoined the two cases, because opposing counsel had refused to provide our attorney with any information regarding the adoption, such as the case #, what district that case was being heard and who was representing the prospective adoption couple. The judge demanded answers to be told about this crucial information so that things could move forward. It was soon discovered that their attorney was Larry Jenkins and they had a pending case up in 2nd District in Ogden, Utah in front Judge Kay. Judge Christiansen also ordered that this case be resolved with in one district, and the way that would be determined was by who filed their paperwork first, Jake or the prospective adoptive couple.
Well, after a few weeks after this conference call, we found out we had some good news coming our way. We filed FIRST. Jake filed on January 6th, 2011, the very next day he found out about the adoption occurring, and the prospective adoptive couple filed on January 28th, 2011, giving us jurisdiction in having both enjoining cases be heard in front of Judge Christiansen. This was a very big plus for us because he already ruled in our favor once with ordering the DNA test as well as he saw the dishonest behavior of LDS Family Services Legal counsel blatantly NOT show up on purpose. Judge Christiansen ordered an evidentiary hearing to be heard in front of him to have all of the convicting evidence be shared. Judge Christansen knew he had a hard decision coming before him because he knew FRAUD was wrote into the law, and said "If I sanction fraud in my court, I will be denying a biological father thee right to his son, but if I don't I rule against this prospective adoptive couple who has grown to love and bond with this child."
Since mid-August we had not had much activity gone on since that real break through. There had been a conference call with Dave Hardy, Larry Jenkins and our attorney discussing how they would move forward and that was it. Our attorney had been working to get a new court date with Judge Christiansen and was not having much luck with opposing counsel cooperating, again another DELAY tactic.
We had unresolved business from a motion we filed originally back in January and were ordered to go back in front of the commissioner, in September, who originally heard our case and really didn't make any progress, due to her ordering us to go back to Judge Christiansen.
We had become very ancy, that no progress was being made. Calls and emails daily were being made to our attorney to see if any new updates had been made. NOTHING.
Finally, Jenny truly wanted to reach out to the adoptive couple, LDS Family Services, Dave Hardy, and families and truly just let them know what they are doing to Jackson. They aren't doing this in the best interest of the child, they are doing this in the best interest of their pocketbook. Since she is not part of this pending case, she reached out to them all via written letters. They were sent out on November 15th, 2011 and all were confirmed received within 2-3 days. Jake, nor his attorney had any knowledge of this to protect anything with the current case.
Little did we know, Larry Jenkins and the prospective adoptive couple had been collaborating and in the works with Dave Hardy on how they could try to get this thing maneuvered and finalized.
On Thanksgiving day, we received the most devastating and heartbreaking news yet throughout this whole ordeal. Jenny's father, who through the grapevine, has some connections with the prospective adoptive couple, heard that the adoption had been FINALIZED. What? How is this possible you ask? We were wondering the same thing. We could not believe this news could be true. There was NO possible way that this could happen right? We had been enjoined with the adoption case 2 different times. Since it was a holiday, we had to wait 4 grueling days until Monday, when our attorneys office was open for business. We called and had to DELIVER the devastating news to OUR own attorney. He was astonished just as we were. He immediately began calling to Larry Jenkins, Dave Hardy, and LDS Family Services, and AGAIN received NO information. Our attorney, wrote a letter to Larry Jenkins, to our dismay replied with a response we could not believe.
He informed us, that he checked with the court in 2nd District, and since Jake was not part of this adoption did not need proper notification of this adoption proceeding to move forward and that his client's were able to FINALIZE the adoption. WHAT? WHAT? WHAT? He DISOBEYED, Judge Christiansen's orders TWICE to enjoin the adoption case and our case. Judge Christiansen enjoined the cases for this EXACT reason, because he did not want someone to be able to make a final decision without both parties being heard. Judge Christiansen even filed a motion to stay on the case back in October, to make sure that their were no movements in this case until they came back in front of him. He also informed us that his clients felt threatened and would take protective action from the court if the harassment didn't stop. Which is ridiculous they would even say such a thing. There was nothing threatening wrote in the letters, it was the absolute truth, and Jenny's opinion, which she clearly states over and over she is not threatening anyone.
We will be posting the letters that were written by Grandma Graham over the next few days.
We are still 100% fighting this, and are in the process to intervene with the adoption. We are currently still awaiting to get a court date to go back before Judge Christansen, to share with him the news, that opposing counsel does not care what he rules or his orders, because he is going to go behind his back, LIE, and FRAUDULENTLY, get this adoption to go through.
Larry Jenkins was able to use FRAUD to allow his client to make a STOLEN baby theirs. They have a child who they want to bless, and get sealed in the LDS temple, and they are doing this KNOWING that they were dishonest, to get this to ultimately go through. We really aren't quite sure what they are thinking. Do they really not realize that Jackson will be 18 and we will tell him EVERYTHING? He will know the absolute truth and know that his so called parents took him against his will? They will have their world crashing down sooner than later. Time is flying by fast. Jackson is almost 1 years old. We only have to wait 17 more years to see our sweet boy.
If you feel as outraged about this as we do and did, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE, voice your opinions to the adoptive couple, Larry Jenkins, LDS Family Services, Utah General Attorney Mark Shurtleff, and all of the Legislators in UTAH. This truly has to end. We can not have corrupt people creating the laws that deal with children, representing the laws that deal with children, and breaking the laws that deal with children.
Tune in tomorrow for Day 1 of the letter sequence. Also, a 4 page spread will be running in the Salt Lake Tribune, about the Utah adoption practices, ethics, and our story, beginning on Christmas Day.
Jackson, we have a had a few rough weeks with the holidays around and your birthday coming around the corner. Don't worry we have not forgotten about you and have not given up. We love you so much and will continue to fight until you are home with us and justice is serviced.
-Love,
Aunt Heidi
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