February, 2005
Are You My Mother?
My mom was adopted at age 2. By 52 she was itching to find out who her real parents were. So one of my first cases out of law school was to find my own grandparents. I agreed to take the case because I figured I had 30 years worth of birthday and Christmas presents coming to me.
My first stop was to the adoption agency. But under the law, they can only disclose non-identifying information such as medical history, ethnicity, socio-economic background, and educational info. And if they figure you can handle the truth, they can also tell you the circumstances under which you “became available for adoption.” In my mom’s case, the agency didn’t know – they didn’t keep good records in the late 30’s.
Next stop is to go to Court and ask the judge if you can take a peek at the court records of the adoption. This gives you all the important info, like names and addresses. The judge has the discretion to let you look at the file if s/he finds you have shown “good cause” for needing to see it. Wanting to know who your real parents are doesn’t qualify as “good cause,” you need something more to hang your hat on. I explained to the court that my mom had some serious medical issues at the time and that we needed to know specific medical information about her biorents.
I don’t think the judge cared what I said. He turned to my mom and said “Why do you want to look at this file?” My mom said: “I just want to know what her name is.” “Will you leave it at that?” he asked. My mom assured him she would. “Oh, I won’t track them down or anything like that.” she promised. She didn’t need to. My younger brother did it for her.
So it was a family effort to find the rest of the family. Turns out gram had a few kids she gave away before marrying and settling down. And Gramps was so proud when he heard he was going to be a father, he decided to have more kids with his own wife. Ten years later my mom says rather than opening that door, she wished she could have just peeked through the window.
