Natural Fathers' Rights?

Question

My father did not sign any consent or relinquishment for my adoption (in 1970). I hope that fathers rights are more protected these days

The State I was born in has an Adoption Registry where, if you are alive and/or actually know about the registry, parents and the adoptee plus any siblings can register to be 'matched'.

I have two questions

1. Is it fair to never have knowledge of each other because one party is deceased and therefore cannot register

2. Is it fair that a party is disqualified from registering because they did not sign the relinquishment or the adoption happened without their knowledge or consent?

Answer 1

Mutual consent registries are a sop thrown to adoptees in lieu of open records, and in the name of mythical "birth parent privacy."  They are next to useless because even parties who want to be found may not know they exist.

I have no idea, to this day, whether my first father ever knew of my existence.  My first mother did not tell her parents who he was and, having never seen my birth certificate, I have no idea whose name she ended up putting on it.

Adoption activists should settle for nothing short of open records.

I hope first fathers have more rights these days too--outside of Utah, that is.

Answer 2

Sadly, fathers' rights are not more protected today than in the past.  In some states, if the father is not married to the mother when the child is born, his name can not be added to the birth certificate.  

Is it fair to never have knowledge? ABSOLUTELY NOT!

Is it fair to be disqualified from registering on an adoption registry because they didn't sign relinquishment papers? Of course not.  However, sadly both things are LEGAL.  

I suspect many of the laws excluding father's rights were established in decades past to protect men from responsibility for their own bad behavior.  Responsible men who want to father their children are hurt by these ridiculously outdated laws.  

Many "presumed" fathers don't even know about their limited rights in some states to establish paternity, which must be done through the courts within 30 days (or less) of the birth of their child.

Per www.childwelfare.gov

http://www.childwelfare.gov/systemwide/l...  

"Approximately 23 States have statutes authorizing the establishment of putative father registries. Several States, however, only mandate by law that a putative father file a notice of his paternity claim within a certain period of time. Failure to register or file may preclude the right to notice of termination or adoption proceedings.

Putative fathers have had fewer rights with regard to their children than either unwed mothers or married parents. Over the past several decades, putative fathers have used the Fourteenth Amendment to challenge the termination of their parental rights when the birth mother relinquishes their child for adoption."

Information on adoption.com states (a pro-adoption site),

http://library.adoption.com/birthfathers...

"If a birth father has not done anything to become a presumed father, he is a Putative Father. This means he has no right to be informed of the pregnancy or adoption plan unless he takes specific action to obtain rights."

According to an article in the New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/19/nation...

"Under Florida law, & that of other states, an unmarried father has no right to withhold consent for adoption unless he has registered with the state putative father registry before an adoption petition is filed. ...to claim those rights most states require a father to put his name on a registry.

The deadlines may be 5 days after birth or 30, or any time before an adoption petition is filed.

And registries are a double-edged sword: It remains an open question whether they serve more to protect fathers' rights or to protect adoptive parents, & the babies they have bonded with, from biological fathers' claims.

Adoption lawyers say some birth mothers refuse to identify the father to forestall interference. There are no statistics on how many unmarried fathers seek to raise babies the birth mother has relinquished."

Should it be legal for mothers to purposely withhold information about their child's father?  Shouldn't father's have a constitutinal right to parent their child?

Answer 3

No , but laws are made and changed everyday - make a petition to your congressman, maybe he or she can help you.

Answer 4

No, to both of your questions. That doesn't seem fair.

Answer 5

There has been some minimal improvement but we are still fighting. I am fighting the State of Delaware right now.

My ex-girlfriend had another guy do a voluntary acknowledgment of paternity on my daughter from another state after she took off. I kept asking state agencies to help but they all turned me away and then they manipulated court documents to try to stop me also. Now we are fighting in federal court 15 years later. A long fight, I hope my daughter appreciates everything i have done to find her and to get to her.

I even have to talk to the Delaware AG's office here in a few hours about a pretrial we have on Tuesday.

Answer 6

Mutual consent registries assume many things that have already been pointed out.  They also assume that the only thing adopted persons want  is reunion.  Therefore, this is thrown to them like the leftovers scraps to a dog.  It gives lots of people the feeling of satisfaction that adoptees and natural parents are being accommodated, so open records need not be an issue.  As we see by the variety of answers by adopted people, some want reunion, some don't and some simply want information.

Of course, they also assume that somehow birthparents have a right beyond the average citizen simply because they relinquished (whether they know they did or not.)  This mysterious and never proven right of "birthparent anonymity" is apparently so sacred that it goes beyond the grave.

To answer your direct questions, it is completely not fair to people who are dealing with the deceased or for those who never knew an adoption occurred in the first place.  This affects not only natural fathers who never knew, but adopted persons who are not told they were adopted.

Adopted citizens are the only persons in our society who are denied the right to access the factual records of their own births.  This unequal treatment under the law is discrimination, and therefore it is wrong.  

It doesn't matter if a person wants reunion or not.  It doesn't even matter if a person cares whether or not he or she has the right of access enjoyed by his or her non-adopted counterparts.  They were many women who did not care about the right to vote.  Some women were actually against it.  But, because the discrimination is wrong, the right to access for adopted citizens needs to be restored, just as the right for women to vote needed to be instated, whether some women wanted it or not.