Thursday, April 10, 2008

Baylee Rayne

Well, as usual, court did not go exactly as expected. We actually got a decision that day...it just wasn't exactly what we expected. I showed up for court about 15 minutes early, sat down & got out my People magazine (since I had no kids with me, I kind of thought maybe I'd get to read a page or two of it). I hadn't even gotten to the first article when the County Attorney came out & asked me to come in back for a minute. (Does anybody else think I'm there WAY too much if the County Attorney knows exactly who I am?!) He said one of the defense attorneys had come up with an idea the day before - they wanted to do a transfer of custody to us, and the biological parents would get limited, supervised visits. I called Chris & we decided that we were not willing to do a transfer of custody (to me it is kind of like a divorce when one parent has physical custody but the other parents still gets visits & input) we would only be willing to do an adoption, and we were really not too keen on any visits.

The defense attorney said that she had stopped working on her case because the DAY BEFORE COURT when she had talked to the social worker late in the afternoon and he said that might work, so she took it as a definite yes. I don't quite understand how she could think that was a definite yes, since most normal people would probably agree that Chris & I would have to be contacted & agree to this before it could actually happen. I'm thinking it was just an excuse since she probably had no case to even work on. (Did I mention her client came to court in the lovely orange jumpsuit & flip flops that the County jail is kind enough to let him wear while he is staying with them?) So she said if nothing could get worked out she was going to request a continuance (and the judge had already said if the attorney asked for it, she would grant it). If they got a continuance, they wouldn't have even gotten a new court date for at least 2 months, and by then, the biological father would be close to being released from jail, so there would be a good chance that the judge could give him more time to try & demonstrate that he could parent the child. He has never actually had his rights terminated before, although he does have at least 3 other kids who he does not support. So in the end, both biological parents agreed to consent to a voluntary termination of their parental rights provided that she be adopted by Chris & I and they get up to 4 2-hour visits per year supervised by a third neutral party. It seems that our legal system might be just a bit flawed when you can "make a deal" to determine who a child should be raised by. I did make sure they put in the agreement that if (when) they start missing their scheduled visits, the visits will cease. I give them a year to screw that part up (their biological mother has never disappointed me when it comes to her missing visits). I also found it a bit funny that they started giving the defense attorney names of people that could supervise; names like the bio-father's relatives....I'm not sure what part of neutral they don't understand, but since we have to approve whoever supervises the visits, I'm quite certain it will not be anyone related to either of them!

Amata loves "her baby", however, Caleb still has not warmed up to her much (Apparently, he thought that he should have been able to be "the baby" for more than 10 1/2 months, and to be perfectly honest I can't say I blame him!). Tyler & Cameron like her, but Tyler is regretting his offer to help with the babies if we kept this one...he said he didn't know it would be so much work - I did!

1 comment:

Tricia said...

I just finished reading the story of how your family was formed and I'm in complete awe, on so many levels. To say it's an amazing story seems an understatement, but amazing is the only word I can find.