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Adoption Has Its Downs and Its Ups

I recently worked with a couple seeking to adopt a child to be born to a northern Virginia mother. Coordinating with a Virginia attorney whom I knew as a colleague from the Academy of Adoption and Assisted Reproduction Attorneys, arrangements were made to provide some financial assistance as permitted by the laws of Wisconsin and Virginia. The birth mother was somewhat elusive at times and was raising several of her own children. No father around. The couple flew to meet her and came away anxiously anticipating bringing home their first child. As time went by, the behavior of the birth mother raised concerns with me, our clients and the attorney in Virginia. It was decided that eventual placement was unlikely and our clients made the sad and difficult decision to withdraw.

As rarely happens, within days our clients were contacted concerning a possible placement from a birth mother in North Carolina. A NC Academy attorney was retained to coordinate the legal part of the placement. Our clients hopped in their car and drove straight through from Wisconsin to NC, met the baby boy, completed the NC and ICPC requirements and returned to Wisconsin with the little guy.

The story didn’t end there for me or our clients. Several weeks later my wife and I attended the 25th anniversary Gift of Adoption Fund dinner in Milwaukee. As many of you may know, the Gift of Adoption Fund raises money to give grants to adopting couples who need financial assistance to complete their adoptions. My wife and I were assigned to the table which was reserved for a grant family. GOAF honors a grant family at its annual dinner and has them talk about their adoption journey including how GOAF played an important role. I hadn’t met my clients in person for the VA and NC cases but communicated only by phone during our representation of them. We exchanged names and began chatting. It suddenly occurred to me that they were my clients. I was meeting my clients for the first time. The baby could not been better behaved for the entire evening, was absolutely adorable, and was cared for lovingly by both parents. Reflecting on the evening reminds me why I am so privileged to be an adoption attorney.

— Steve Hayes is a Fellow of AAAA and practices adoption and ART law in Wisconsin.

When It All Comes Together

Tyrone is in hospitality and his husband Howard is an educator. Like many gay male couples, they first met in the gym. But unlike lots of their friends, they both knew they wanted to be parents. The pandemic got them focused on moving forward toward fatherhood and they reached out to me for a match. Surprisingly and wonderfully soon thereafter, a fantastic expectant momma Jenny connected with me. She was recently out of work and was wanting to finish her schooling, and the birth father had also lost all job prospects in the pandemic and left the country. She knew she wasn’t ready to parent this child and began exploring options. Jenny was referred by a friend of her family who is a judge and knows my work (It helps to be Florida Bar board certified in adoption and a member of the prestigious Academy!) and Jenny decided the adoption path would be the best. Among the profiles shared with her, she excitedly chose Tyrone and Howard. Jeanne’s mom was super supportive of her adoption plan and she and her mom were all in with her “baby daddies.” The birth father agreed as well and signed off on his parental rights immediately, relieved that a solid plan was in place. Navigating the COVID restrictions in the hospital and the many understandable emotions that arose were challenging but it worked out well and everyone is doing great. One of the best parts is we were able to provide living expenses and necessary support to Jenny through the birth and for six weeks postpartum including providing substantial counseling which helped her get back on her feet and back to school. What a blessing all around! Happy National Adoption Month to all members of the adoption triad; we as adoption professionals are privileged to be a part of your journey!

— Elizabeth Schwartz handles adoptions and ART matters in Florida and is a Fellow os the Academy of Adoption & Assisted Reproduction Attorneys. Learn more about Liz and her practice on her website, http://www.elizabethschwartz.com/

Adoption Celebration – A Different Perspective

I had such a wonderful meeting over breakfast this morning with one of the women I advocate for through her adoption plan. She always looks so pretty, but today she arrived wearing something extra special… She shared that the beaded jewelry she wore around her waist was custom made to adorn her growing belly. She says she plans to keep the jewelry after her pregnancy as a momento of the child she plans to place with the incredible adoptive family she has chosen.

Adoption isn’t easy. Growing life inside of you then placing that life in the hands of another isn’t easy. Which is why I admire her so much for this thoughtful gesture. Indeed, tears have been and will be shed, but she is also allowing herself the space to celebrate this time, to cherish the memory of her pregnancy. She looked for the good in a hard place and found it.

I think that’s the key, the great big secret to happiness… not to somehow dodge all the tough stuff, but to find (and adorn) the beauty within it.

— Written by Malia Price, Destiny Adoption Services & Consulting, Inc.

Adoption Reunions – Thoughts from an Adoption Attorney

At the office one morning after just completing an adoption final hearing I received a call from an unexpected voice. It was from an adoptee whose adoption we handled more than 23 years ago. That “child” was now a hopeful adult, looking to connect with his birth mother. I recalled (to myself) meeting his birth parents at their apartment in Tampa. They were a sweet couple, looking to give their baby a wonderful home. I remembered this placement well.

Nearing 25 years since our first private adoption placement, we are hearing from an increased number of adoptees reaching out to find their birth parents. Whether this increase is due to a growing interest in ancestry and personal history, open adoptions and adoption reunions filling our social media feeds, or a desire to build more family connections, many adoptees are reaching out to establish a more open relationship with their birth parents.

When I received that call from the adoptee, I initially felt excited and hopeful for him and for his birth mother, and for the opportunity they may have to connect with each other after all these years. But that initial excitement was followed by a wave of internal questions. Did the birth mother sign a consent to release her information to her child, should he be interested in finding her in adulthood? If the birth mother did not sign a consent to release information, would it be right to contact her after all these years if she did not initially express a wish to have an open or semi-open adoption? What if she had signed a release but her feelings had since changed?

I also thought of protecting her confidentiality and the life she was currently living. How would my letter impact her present life? Perhaps she created her own family after placement and did not wish to share the adoption with her partner or children. By sending her a letter, would there be a risk of someone in her family picking up the mail and asking her about why she received a letter from a law firm, causing her to have to explain the situation to them?

If she had signed a release of information, I considered whether she may be in a different frame of mind from how she felt at the time of placement. Would she be prepared emotionally to begin direct communication with her adopted child? Could I be reopening old wounds by reaching out to her? On the other hand, with her child reaching adulthood, maybe she had been holding out hope that she would hear from him and contacting her may lead to a long-awaited reunion.

From the time we established our practice we have known that these reunions would be a possibility, but the reality is much more complicated than we could have anticipated. And the questions that come along with adoption reunions can create emotional and ethical challenges that all parties to the adoption must learn how to navigate.

Adoptions today are much more open than 20 years ago. Thankfully, most current placements include direct sharing of contact information which allows birth and adoptive families to continue communication and sometimes visitation with each other over the years. This evolution toward continued contact may lead to reunions no longer being necessary in the future – a possibility that raises its own questions about how adoptions may change the picture of a “family” going forward.

And in the event you are wondering, how did my case turn out? I was able to send a private message to the birth mother (thank you Facebook). After several months she responded expressing her joy and excitement that her son wanted to find her and apologizing about the delay. She took that time to talk with all of her children and obtain their thoughts about a reunion. Her whole family was on board and wanted to take the next step. These two families have reconnected in a journey to provide the best for their child. I am not sure where things currently stand but am rooting for all of the laughs, tears, hugs, and love that we wish for in adoption reunions.

— Michelle M. Hausmann, Esq., is an attorney with Hausmann & Hickman, P.A. (www.AdoptionandSurrogacy.com) and a Fellow of AAAA practicing both adoption and ART law in Florida.

One Of My Best Adoption Experiences

A lot of people focus on adoption as involving infants or small children, but one of my most rewarding experiences was working with clients who adopted three young men who had aged out of foster care, never having had found their “forever families.” My clients were a married couple who worked in the financial sector. Through their work, they joined a company-wide effort to mentor young people who had aged out of foster care. They met three young men of different racial and cultural backgrounds from them. These young men and my clients bonded after months of working together to assist them with college and work goals. My clients adopted two of them first, each of them having had absolutely no contact with their birth families since they were young children. The third came about two years later after he and his birth mother, with whom he had some relationship, agreed that the adoption would be a formal recognition of his chosen family and would provide him with the security he had not known as a child. Adoption, for them, was about legal and societal recognition of family, no matter how it was formed or when it was formed. There were a lot of tears of love and joy on both of these adoption days.

— Deb Guston is the Adoption Director and a Fellow of the Academy of Adoption & Assisted Reproduction Attorneys practicing both adoption and ART law in New Jersey

The Guts to Become a Parent During COVID

Becoming a parent during the Covid-19 pandemic takes guts. No wonder the U.S. birth rate is the lowest it’s been in over a century! Those committing to become parents through adoption and assisted reproduction have inspired me for over thirty years, but they have truly been my heroes during the past eighteen months.

Some I have met only via video conference, yet the intensity of our work on their adoption journey makes it seem impossible that we have not been in the same room together. I finally “met” the adorable babies on my computer screen at final adoption hearings before courts in New York and New Jersey held virtually. My desktop even crashed last month and I needed to replace it – talk about pandemic fatigue!

Some, like LGBTQ parents, are particularly vulnerable, a vulnerability which the pandemic exacerbated. In one of the most tumultuous adoptions of the Covid era, steadfast hopeful adoptive dads, who had already been through a failed adoption, received a text from their birth mother containing a photo of a newborn baby and claiming an unplanned home birth. Two tortuous days later, during which we did not know whether this was a scam, the birth mother finally took the baby to the hospital, and he is where he belongs – in his adoring dads’ arms. Phew!

Some bravely became parents using assisted reproduction. My lesbian clients used reciprocal IVF for their pregnancy. They created an embryo with the ova of one of them and donor sperm, which was transferred to the other, who gave birth to their child. Under an exemplary, forward-thinking New York statute which was only enacted in February 2021, the Child Parent Security Act, I filed a proceeding for an Order of Parentage, declaring my clients both as the legal parents of the child. In (what else) a virtual hearing before the New York court a couple of weeks ago, the judge entered the Order of Parentage, declaring: “This is only my second hearing under the new statute and I am moved to be able to recognize you as the parents of your child.”

I look forward to the day that the pandemic is behind us, but until then, guts, resilience, and strength will trump the hardships of those becoming parents through adoption and assisted reproduction during Covid.

–Robin Fleischner is a AAAA Fellow practicing adoption and ART law in New York. Learn more about her practice on her website, www.adoptsurrogatelaw.com.

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