Thank you so much for all of your support with getting our sweet little baby Jackson Michael Strickland back. Thank you for signing the petition and spreading the word on many blogs, facebook pages, twitter, etc. We have had many people ask how they can help and this is how you can. You can help change the Utah adoption laws. House Bill 308 represented by Christine Watkins is revising the current adoption laws for unwed father's. There is a hearing tomorrow, Feb. 9th 2012, at the Utah State Capitol builidng at 4:00 PM. We need people to flood the court room in support of this bill passing. Although, this bill will not help with getting our sweet little Jack back, it will help future father's and families not have to deal with the heartache we have endure the past year. The hearing will be located in the Northwest building, the house building, in room 25W.
We can not thank you enough for how much this support will mean to us and all of the unwed father's out there.
Thank you and God Bless!
The Strickland Family
Showing posts with label utah adoption bill. Show all posts
Showing posts with label utah adoption bill. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 8, 2012
Monday, February 6, 2012
Dueling Adoption Bills
The attempt at changing the adoption laws is great, but they really aren't addressing the real issue here. FRAUD is allowed in a law with children. There will be a hearing today at Utah State Capitol builidng at 2:00 PM. Be there if you can.
© 2012 The Salt Lake Tribune
Dueling bills address giving unwed fathers notice of adoption
Legislation • Pair take different approaches to notify men of Utah adoption proceedings.
Two lawmakers want to address the rights unwed biological fathers have in an adoption proceeding, but with notably different approaches.
SB55, sponsored by Sen. Todd Weiler, R-Woods Cross, says a birth mother, adoption agency or attorneys involved may send a “prebirth notice” to any presumed father informing him of a potential adoption proceeding in Utah. HB308, sponsored by Rep. Christine Watkins, D-Price, would require such notices, but only to out-of-state fathers.
Each bill gives the father 30 days to respond to the notice by acting to protect his rights in Utah; failure to respond in that time period would extinguish any right to object to the adoption. Watkins’ bill would eliminate the need for a father to take court action before he can file with the state’s Putative Father Registry, while Weiler’s bill would keep in place the current requirement that an unwed father file a paternity action in court before he can file with the registry. He must do both to be entitled to notice under Utah’s current adoption law.
The House Health and Human Services Committee will consider HB308 Monday at 2 p.m.
Weiler said recent Utah Supreme Court decisions, including a Jan. 27 ruling in favor of a Colorado father’s right to intervene in an adoption, have “highlighted” the lack of a notice provision in Utah’s statute.
“This bill will address that public outcry we’ve been hearing,” said Weiler, an attorney who has handled more than 50 adoption cases, including some involving unmarried biological fathers. “I think this strikes a good balance between the various interests at stake.”
Weiler’s bill also adds that an unwed father has “at least” one business day after a child’s birth to act to protect his rights, language aimed at addressing a 2007 Utah Supreme Court decision that found it was unconstitutional to not allow extra time when a birth occurs on a weekend or holiday.
Weiler’s bill was crafted with help from attorney Larry Jenkins, chairman of the Utah Adoption Council’s standards and practice committee. Jenkins, who is being sued by a Virginia father who alleges a vast conspiracy exists in Utah to take children from unwed biological fathers, was unavailable for immediate comment Friday.
But attorney David Hardy, the council’s past president, said the industry group approved the “general ideas” in the bill.
“The reason for that is it allows a birth mother to give notice and plan ahead as far as what is going to happen with the child,” Hardy said. “It is something the birth mother may elect to follow, but she can say, ‘I don’t want to.’ It’s not mandatory.”
The notice provision would have no effect on an unwed father’s responsibility to independently register and begin a paternity action to protect his rights before a mother gives birth.
Hardy said Weiler’s proposal is modeled after adoption laws in Arizona and Indiana.
“We understand from adoption practitioners in other states it works well,” Hardy said.
But in Arizona, mothers don’t have a choice about notification once an adoption action has been filed with the court. They must then identify potential fathers and inform them they are pursuing an adoption.
Wes Hutchins, an adoption attorney, consulted on Watkins’ bill and believes it is the stronger of the two proposals.
“Absolutely,” said Hutchins, who is the council’s current president but spoke independently of the group. “It does a better job of protecting the rights of out-of-state birth fathers and preventing birth mothers from forum shopping in Utah.”
Weiler’s bill reinforces what’s known as the immunity clause in Utah’s adoption law, which says an unwed father cannot use fraud by the birth mother as a defense for his failure to act. It adds language that says once a birth father receives a notice, his responsibility to act remains intact no matter what the birth mother may tell him.
“If she comes back and says she’s changed her mind, that doesn’t change his responsibility,” Hardy said.
Neither proposed bill states when in the pregnancy the notice to an unwed father should occur, though Hardy noted “it is not something that works late in the pregnancy” since under Utah law a birth mother may irrevocably relinquish her parental rights and consent to an adoption within a day of giving birth. The proposal may conflict with existing law that gives an out-of-state father 20 days to act when he discovers after the fact that his child was born and placed for adoption in Utah.
“That’s an open question we may need to look at,” Hardy said.
brooke@sltrib.com
© 2012 The Salt Lake Tribune
Sunday, January 29, 2012
This is amazing!
Utah adoption bill aims to give unwed fathers more protections
Legislation • Mothers required to give notice of intent by mail or publication.
A state lawmaker has introduced a bill aimed at preventing an unmarried woman from coming to Utah to give birth and pursue adoption without informing the biological father of her plan, a problem highlighted in a Friday Utah Supreme Court ruling involving an unmarried Colorado father.
House Bill 308, sponsored by Rep. Christine Watkins, D-Price, would require pregnant women to give notice by mail or publication to out-of-state unmarried fathers if they plan to give birth and place infants for adoption in Utah.
Watkins’ proposed bill also simplifies the process an unwed father must follow to initially protect his rights, eliminating the requirement that he initiate a court action before he can file a notice of intent to claim paternity with the state’s putative father registry. That change would apply to Utah residents as well as unwed fathers who reside elsewhere.
The bill would require a notice to be sent to the unmarried father’s last known residence or published in a newspaper where he was last known to reside that informs him of an adoption plan and what he needs to do to protect his rights. It sets a deadline of 30 days for the father to act once he receives the notice or the mother gives consent or relinquishes the baby.
An unwed father who files a paternity notice with the state registry would then have an additional 30 days to begin a court paternity action and file other declarations about his interest in assuming custody and caring for the child. If the unmarried father does not respond, his consent to the adoption would be assumed, the bill says.
“I am very sympathetic to fathers loving their children,” said Watkins, who has two brothers and four sons. “A lot of fathers don’t want to give up on their children. I thought, ‘You know, let’s give these guys a chance.’”
Utah’s current law says that once a birth mother consents to an adoption or relinquishes her child, that decision may not be revoked. Watkins’ proposed bill changes that, too. If a biological father successfully asserts his parental rights, a birth mother would have 30 days to then revoke her consent to the adoption.
Two Utah attorneys said the legislation was a “step in the right direction.”
“The state obviously needs a means to facilitate adoptions of out-of-state children but the current system is ripe for abuse,” said Joshua Peterman, an attorney for a Florida father whose effort to intervene in his daughter’s adoption is currently pending before the Utah Supreme Court.
Wes Hutchins, who is an adoption attorney and an adoptive father, consulted on Watkins’ bill. He is also president of the Utah Adoption Council but spoke independently of that organization on Friday.
He said the Utah Supreme Court’s rulingrequiring a rehearing in the case of Colorado father Robert Manzanares “lends considerable support for positive change in this area of the law,” including changes proposed by Watkins that are “designed to prevent birth mothers from forum shopping Utah just to cut bio dads out of the parenting picture.”
The justices determined Manzanares did not know and reasonably could not have known that a birth and adoption would take place in Utah, entitling him to intervene in the proceedings.
John Hedrick, Manzanares’ Colorado attorney, said given the current loophole in Utah’s adoption law, he has taken to urging unwed fathers to file in Utah any time a birth mother has the slightest tie to the state or its predominant Mormon religion, a practice he’ll continue unless the law is changed.
© 2012 The Salt Lake Tribune
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)