Quote:
Originally Posted by desertdetroiter
I do wonder though if in a case like this, is blood relation really all that cut and dried.
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Yes, the law says its so.
If you recall the Baby Richard melodrama, a couple, Danielle Jankovich and Otokar Kirschner, had been living together for some time when she became pregnant.
When Danielle was 9 months pregnant, Otokar's grandmother became seriously ill. He went back to his native Slovakia to care for her. While he was there, an aunt apparently was mad at him and called Danielle to tell her Otokar had taken up with another woman.
That was a lie. It never happened, but Danielle got scared and a social worker pressured her to give up the infant for adoption.
The social worker also took Danielle to a different hospital than the one Otokar and Danielle intended to use in order to hide it from Otokar. The social worker also pressured Danielle into not listing Otokar as the father on the birth certificate.
Why? Because the social worker was getting a kick-back from her friend and personal attorney whom she called to set up the adoption.
At the signing, Danielle says she knows the father, but refuses to identify him and the attorney, totally ignoring his due diligence, makes no attempt to locate the father, because he's in a hurry to collect his adoption fees.
When Otokar returns from Slovakia, he's looking for his infant child and Danielle and her father tell him the boy died, but other friends and family members told him Danielle went to a different hospital. In a frantic search, Otokar finds the hospital and learns the child did not die, but was given up for adoption.
57 days after the child was born -- that's days, not weeks or months -- Otokar files a lawsuit to get his son back.
After much legal wrangling, the trial court in an incredibly differently twisted opinion finds Otokar to be an unfit parent for "not having any interest in his son" and "abandoning" his son and allows the adoptive parents to keep the child.
Undaunted, Otokar files an appeal and the appellate court affirms the trial court's ruling.
Otokar then takes his case to the Illinois Supreme Court. Baby Richard is now 4 years old.
The Illinois Supreme Court in a scathing ruling condemning the trial court, appellate court, social worker, lawyer and adoptive parents, reverses and gives Otokar his son back.
During the litigation, Danielle learns the aunt lied, she and Otokar reconcile and they marry.
There was a lot of phony media outrage that generated country-wide attention, mostly due to the propaganda and disinformation spread by a columnist for the
Chicago Tribune, Bob Greene.
Anyway, for nearly all States, both parents must give their voluntary consent to terminate their parental rights and absent that, it requires a finding that the parents are unfit, which allows their rights to be involuntarily terminated and then and only then are the "best interests" of the child are considered.
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