Look Again - Lisa Scottoline [57]
“You’re also concerned that if you’re not right, you’d cause the Bravermans more pain and upset.”
Ellen hadn’t thought of them, but okay.
“Let’s take a hypothetical. Assume for a moment that you’re right. Will is Timothy.”
Ellen hated the very sound of the sentence. “Could that even happen?”
“Hypothetically, it’s easy, now that I give it some thought. All that is required for a valid adoption is a birth mother to produce a birth certificate, which is easy enough to fake. Unlike a driver’s license or a passport, it doesn’t even have a photo.” Ron stroked his beard. “And she has to supply a signed waiver of her parental rights, from the birth father, too, which is also easy to forge, and she could make up the father’s name. There are plenty of cases from mothers who put a child up for adoption without the father’s consent. They’re very common.”
Ellen was remembering the elementary school, where Charles Cartmell’s house was supposed to have been. The Charles Cartmell that nobody had heard of and who didn’t exist.
“The second question is what are your parental rights, if any? And what are the Bravermans’ parental rights, if any? That’s the question that’s worrying you, isn’t it?” Ron paused. “If you’re right, who gets Will?”
Ellen felt her eyes well up, but kept it together.
“You raise an interesting question under Pennsylvania law, and one not well understood by laymen. It involves the difference between adoption cases and custody cases.”
Ellen couldn’t take the suspense. “Just tell me, would I get to keep Will or would I have to give him back to the Bravermans?”
“You’d have to give him back to the Bravermans. No question.”
Ellen felt stricken. She struggled to maintain control, teetering on the fine line between crying and screaming. But Will was in the next room, lost in a world somewhere over the rainbow.
“The Bravermans, as the child’s birth parents, have an undisputed legal right to their child. They’re alive, and they didn’t give him up for adoption. If he was kidnapped, your adoption is simply invalid. Therefore, as a legal matter, the court would return Will to them.”
“And he would go live in Florida?”
“That’s where they live, so yes.”
“Would I have the right to visit him?”
“No.” Ron shook his head. “You would have no rights at all. The Bravermans may permit you to, perhaps to wean him from you, so to speak. But no court would order them to permit you to visit.”
“But I adopted him lawfully,” Ellen almost wailed.
“True, but in the hypothetical, no one gave him up for adoption.” Ron cocked his head, tenting his fingers again. “As you remember from when you adopted him, you presented the court with signed waivers, consents to adoption from his mother and his father. That’s a prerequisite to any adoption. If the consents were false, forged, or otherwise fraudulent, the adoption is invalid, whether you knew it or not.”
Ellen forced herself to think back to her online research, done last night in anticipation of this meeting. “I read online about the Kimberley Mays case, in Florida, do you remember that? She was the baby who was switched at birth in the hospital, with another baby. In that case, the court let her stay with her psychological parent instead of her biological parent.”
“I know the case. It got national attention.”
“Doesn’t that help me here? Can’t we do it that way?”
“No, it doesn’t help you at all.” Ron opened his hands, palms up. “That’s what I started to tell you. There’s a fundamental difference between adoption and custody. The Florida court in the Mays case was applying a custody analysis, which involves an inquiry into the best interests of the child. The court decided that it was in the child’s best interests for her to stay with her psychological father.” Ron made a chopping motion with his hand. “But we have an adoption case here. It has nothing to do with what’s in Will’s best interests. It’s simply a matter of power. Your case is like those in which the father’s consent to the adoption was forged by the mother.”
“What happens in those cases?”
“The child goes to the biological