Note from ANCPR:
This is a very interesting case. At least the courts recognized the right of the father, who is in prison, but will be released eventually, to assert his right to develop a relationship with his child. It’s very easy, when looking at these cases from a safe distance, to simply go on principle - the child is a child of the father, father wants a relationship, and that’s just the way it is. On the other hand, the child is in a stable home, with other kids, and with foster parents who love him. However, it seems to me that for too long courts, and society as a whole, has tried to play God with family and children. The assertion of the father at the end of this article is exactly right. The child deserves to know where he came from. His father is alive, and wants to be with him. Who are we to make judgments about the fitness of this man to act as father. The fact is, he is the father. Period. What we as a society need to do is to see situations like this from eyes bathed in love, unconditional love. From this perspective, the courts and the foster parents would offer the child as much love as they can, as well as support, encouragement, and love for the father. Instead, it’s all about possession, me, mine, rights, etc. Isn’t this exactly why there is so much strife in this world? When humans try to play God, this is the result - strife and suffering. We just can’t get it right. By stepping aside, and simply letting God do the work, there is the possibility of real healing in this case, for all parties. What would it take for the people in our society to begin to look at family issues that way?
Court protects father’s rights
Wisconsin ruling could have longstanding implications. By SARAH CARR
and MARY ZAHN
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
MILWAUKEE — Bobby Grady, a convicted felon in secure detention, didn’t know for more than a year that he had a son.
When he finally learned of his son’s existence, it was only to discover that his parental rights were about to be legally terminated.
Now, Grady wants his son.
Jeffrey, a Milwaukee doctor, raised Grady’s son since the boy’s birth (he is being identified only by first name to protect the boy’s identity in the community). The 3-year-old has had serious medical problems, which required Jeffrey and his wife to take him for treatment several times a day at some points. Over the years, the foster child grew to feel like part of the family.
Now, Jeffrey and his wife want to adopt the child.
Last month, the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled that a circuit judge erred in trying to terminate Grady’s parental rights — to pave the way for an adoption — without a jury trial. According to experts and the parties involved, the decision could have longstanding implications for adoptions in the state. It also could have implications for the rights of fathers who are late to discover that they have a child.
The mother of the 3-year-old named two other men as possible fathers before naming Grady, who learned that he was the father in the fall of 2004 through a DNA test.
“Ultimately (the decision) says a father must be given some type of opportunity to participate in a child’s life,” said James Troupis, the lawyer who represented Grady.
Stephen Hayes, who represented the foster family, said Wisconsin “is one of the most difficult states in the country to free a child for adoption.”
And, he added: “This makes it worse.”
Despite its broader implications, the written decision emphasizes the technical aspects of the case. Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson wrote for the majority that the Milwaukee County Children’s Court judge should not have tried to move to summary judgment on terminating Grady’s parental rights without gathering more facts and allowing a jury trial.
Grady’s attempts to build a relationship with his son occurred after the state had moved to terminate his rights because he did not know he had a son until that point.
“People get their day in court — that’s essentially what they are saying,” said Joe Ehmann, the first assistant state public defender.
In a strongly worded dissent, Justice Jon Wilcox wrote: “Could a cocaine-pushing, woman-battering man, who does not even know about the existence of his child, have accepted and exercised ’significant responsibility for the daily supervision, education, protection and care of his child?’ ”
Grady pleaded no contest in 2004 to manufacturing and distributing cocaine. According to Wilcox’s dissent, Grady was facing charges in the battery of a woman at the time that his son was born.
Both sides lamented that the decision prolongs the uncertainty for the child, who turns 4 in August. The boy was born at least six weeks prematurely and has suffered from respiratory problems and pneumonia. Over the last couple of years, multiple adoption dates have come and passed because of legal delays.
“We have treated this child as part of our family since he joined us at birth and have certainly bonded very closely with him,” Jeffrey said. “To have this continued uncertainty and stress has been really hard on our family.”
Neither Jeffrey nor his wife, Karen, set out to be foster parents. Jeffrey said that through his work as a doctor with an “urban underserved population,” he recognized the “incredible need” for foster parents.
The couple has three biological children, who are 7, 5 and 3 months old.
Jeffrey worries that other potential foster or adoptive parents will be discouraged by the decision.
“It’s really tragic that the best interests of the child were lost in this case, and it was decided on technical interests without consideration of the best interests of this child, of us as foster parents, and of the system as a whole,” he said. “This will have a chilling effect on other potential foster homes.”
In an interview at the detention center last week, Grady thanked his son’s foster family for their efforts but said he “absolutely” wants to start building a relationship with the boy when he is released this year.
“I respect them for taking care of my son; in fact, I love them for that,” he said. “But my son deserves to know who his father is. He deserves to know where he came from.”
Crucial to the decision in his favor was Grady’s point that he made every effort possible to contact his son, once he knew that he had one. He said he sent the boy a money order and shoes through the foster family, and he wrote letters to his son’s social workers.
Grady has never met or spoken to his child.
He said his hope is to slowly build a relationship with his son when he is released, starting with regular visits. Eventually, he said, he would like to get a stable job and live with the boy. The Supreme Court ruling does not determine issues such as visitation and custody — it just opens the door for Grady to fight for them.
If he prevails again and eventually gains custody of his son, Grady said, “I still would give the foster parents a chance to see him and spend the night with him.
“What kind of human being would I be if I didn’t? It would break their hearts, and it would break my son’s heart.”
10 responses so far ↓
1 sandilb // Jul 8, 2007 at 2:10 pm
I am troubled on behalf of the child. While parental rights are critical, a parents who cannot participate in parenting their child should do the right thing and allow their child a loving, forever family and home. Foster kids will be the big losers if every attempt to provide them a forever family opens the door to creating instability for the child.
We need to stop treating children as possessions (”he has my genes therefore I get him”) and worry about THEIR needs. And paramount among those needs is the need for stability, the need to bond with whomever their parent figure is to be, and know they won’t be ripped away from them. Attachment and bonding issues are rampant among foster kids. This is because of the failure to understand and appreciate that the CHILD must have a consistant one or simultaneous two, parents or caregiver(S) to which they attach, and with whom they can give their love and get love.
2 Sally // Jul 8, 2007 at 2:54 pm
The “best interests of the child” principal should not be used as the rigid litmus in any instance, in my opinion, because it is wholly undefined and purposely vague. As you all know, this principle allows judges unlimited power to make capricious decisions. That is why the Constitution (when actually applied) works. The Constitution is not vague nor undefined and gives biological parents rights to their chidlren first and foremost. To do otherwise allows unjust decisions. The foster family, I can only imagine are in terrible pain over this, but, they also knew they were a foster family going into this. Just because they don’t want the father to fight for his Constitutional rights to be a father doesn’t mean he should not be allowed to exercise those rights. No doubt, a very very painful situation but without the Constitution as the litmus test we have injustice and no longer live in a democratic society (which really we don’t because we have family court and VAWA and Title IX, etc.) This father appears, from what we are currently allowed to read, as an example of underperforming fatherhood. But, his actions actually belie that label: 1. Once finding out he is a father, he chooses to turn his life around, and 2. He has helped paved the way for fathers to actually have their Constitutional rights upheld when fighting from having their own children adopted out without their permission. Not just cocaine selling dads are wiped away during unilateral mother-only adoptions - any dad can have this happen to him. He has helped all fathers and helped the tarnish of our almost invisible Constitution.
3 bigvbdaddy // Jul 8, 2007 at 4:29 pm
What rubbish sandilb…
If you truly believe in the “best interests of the child” without the biological father having any chance at all, then I eagerly await the next post where some “concerned” citizen reports that your children are endangered by your care and seeks to remove them to some foster family in the “best interests of the children”. NO ONE is more qualified to care for their children then the biological parents, barring clear and convincing evidence to the contrary.
What this precedent really does is give the bio-dad his chance in court to prove he can be a loving caring father. He may well lose (those of us already victimized in family court know that feeling all too well), but as least the Constitution has *some* weight still in preserving this vital liberty right. Barring that, no parent will be safe from government intervention, and you might as well treat your children as wards of the state from birth — yet another source of revenue. How will this serve our children?
4 Merck // Jul 8, 2007 at 8:04 pm
If the foster parents truly cared about this child they would want him to be with his father, especially when the father is showing a strong parental instinct. It sounds like the dad really wants to be a participant in his child’s life and for the court to interfere with that is, in my opinion, a criminal act.
If this were a well meaning mother who had a problem with drugs, and was making an effort to correct the problem, the courts would not even consider taking this child from its mother. The mother would more than likely require “public assistance” to raise the child – enter the multitude of parasites hungry for federal dollars.
Also, if the child is placed with the father, there would be no money paid to the foster home parents by the state. (A savings for taxpayers) Do I smell “matching federal dollars” here? I don’t know if they get money from the feds for foster home placements but it sure looks suspicious.
If the father gets the kid, he will most likely get a job and support the child on his own, with no help from the state. No federal dollars involved here – that’s not good. There has to be some way for the courts to exploit this child for matching federal dollars in his “best interests” … doesn’t there?
5 cpusrvc // Jul 8, 2007 at 8:15 pm
I am an avid father’s rights proponent, and this is one case that tests my beliefs. I think almost everyone would agree that the child should be able to be adopted by the foster parents, the only parents he’s ever known. The father is a felon, which already caused him to lose many of his constitutional rights. There are no bonds between him and the child. Apparently, he has no parental background, or, if he does, his criminal activities showed his priorities — and he chose crime over his family.
That said, it is not his desire for the child that’s important, it’s his right to the child that matters. Just as freedom demands that the KKK have the right to their opinions, no matter how repulsive, the enforcement of a parent’s right is supreme, even if we don’t like the outcome of the individual situation. That’s why in the criminal system, you are supposed to be presumed innocent, no matter what the evidence, until a court decides otherwise. The preservation of our sacred rights always means minor sacrifices in some few cases. Once we let one righteous case erode that principle, other cases will come along and erode them even more. Just look at our country, and our divorce system now.
6 Merck // Jul 9, 2007 at 6:49 am
Everyone makes mistakes. The fact that this guy loses some of his Constitutional Rights because he is an ex-felon is in itself unconstitutional. Once a person has paid their debt to society, for any crime they were convicted of, they should be restored their full Constitutional Rights. There are tens of thousands of men out there who are being charged with a felony for failure to pay extortion guised as child support. Do we want these men stripped of their Constitutional Rights for these ridiculous charges?
How the hell do we know who the kid would be better off with? My instinct tells me he is better off with his dad regardless of any mistakes he made, and regardless of the claims that he has it good with the foster parents.
The most important determining factor here is that he wants to be the child’s father. He should have that choice. Any woman has that choice. No one dare interfere with the mother’s rights. If the mother doesn’t want to parent the child, no one judges her for giving the child up for adoption. In fact, no one dare pass judgment if she murders the unborn child.
A biological father must have the right to be the father of his child, or be able to give the child up for adoption, the same as any mother has that choice. That’s equal protection under the law.
In other words, the fact that a man is the biological father does not automatically qualify him for a life of forced servitude to pay so-called child support. He must have the right to equal custody, or adoption releasing him of parental rights and obligations the same as the mother has that choice.
If anyone out there doesn’t like, or can’t accept that, they should shop for a different country to call home. In the U.S.A. everyone gets the equal protection of our laws – end of story.
7 littlelawyergirl // Jul 10, 2007 at 8:30 am
Here is the bottom line-the guy should get his trial, and he will get his trial, then the court will simply delay the termination date to allow him to try (and most likely fail) to fashion out a life as that will support him being the full time single parent of a toddler.
As he himself said, he “would like to get a stable job and live with the boy.” Basically, when it actually happens that he gets a stable job and a home, then they will begin allowing the father real contact. Unfortunately, for felons, this is not an especially good likelihood that it will happen in the the timeline that will begin running (in California it is 18 months).
I have encountered this issue a number of times, where CPS claims to have no location on the father, and therefore fails to notify him of the juvenile dependency proceedings, when the truth is he is able to be located using the same locate tools available to other branches of government. CPS’ failure to properly locate and notify parents ruins so many lives.
8 littlelawyergirl // Jul 10, 2007 at 8:53 am
Here is another issue I need to point out: According to the article, he found out that he was the child’s father in the fall of 2004, almost three years ago, around the same time as he peladed no contest to manufacturing and distributing cocaine. He hasn’t yet been released from prison, but he will be this year. The boy will soon turn four years old.
Don’t think about this from a “father’s rights” issue. Answer the question, how long should any child be denied a permanent family while the parents sit in prison (remember, mom’s parental rights have already been terminated in this case).
This child has lived with one family his whole life, and this is the only family he has ever known. So try to determine exactly how many years a child should be with one family while the parents sit in prison until a judge can say, “OK, this is your forever family.” If you think four years isn’t too long, what about when the child is eight or twelve or seventeen?
9 wmcneely // Jul 10, 2007 at 12:38 pm
sandilb, it is good that you are troubled…We have an entire system that says “We do it for the best interest of the child”, but, in reality does it for the money that is offered by the federal government for amounts collected. For a court to actually stop and consider the rights of the NCP is almost miraculous.
littlelawyergirl, do you know of the case personally, because I found nothing that stated the rights of the mother had been terminated. If mom gave up her rights, it was for her only, she cannot assign the rights of the father, even if he is incarcerated. This isn’t a “Father’s rights” issue at all, it is a parental rights issue, that affects NCP’s, of which most are men. We know that it takes two people to make a baby, and yet the courts have a system in place that does not allow for equal access in situations where the parents don’t live together, in fact it alienates the one not living with the child.
The child has lived with a foster family for the majority of his life, and I suspect that his father has taken this into consideration, but, the bottom line is that this child has the right to experience the unconditional love that parents have for their child. The child can only benefit by having his father in his life, wherever he is living. If the father’s rights are terminated, the adopting parents can prevent the father from even seeing him. I know from personal experience with my twin daughters, that getting in the way of someone finding their “roots” (read knowing the other parent) has long standing and far reaching implications.
Good for Wisconsin!!!
10 littlelawyergirl // Jul 12, 2007 at 10:04 am
wmcneely,
I have followed the case closely, but even without additional information other than that which is in the article, one can safely assume that the mother’s rights have already been terminated because the adoption was held up by the failure to give father due process. They would not be proceeding to adoption if mother still had reunification services.
No, mother cannot waive father’s rights. What does happen typically, though, is that mother fails to identify the father, so the court terminates the parental rights of “unknown father.” The state in this case did the right thing by testing man after man until the actual father was found.
Also, you said that the system “does it for the money that is offered by the federal government for amounts collected.” That couldn’t be further from the truth. The moment parental rights are terminated, the support obligation ends forever. Parents may still have to pay support arrears accrued before the date of termination, but in this case, that is not relevant, because, since the father was incarcerated, he has never owed a support obligation, and will not have a support obligation until he gets out of prison.
There was, in fact, a recent California case where mom and dad were trying to terminate father’s parental rights, and the court of appeal said no, you cannot deny the child a parent, even by agreement of both parents (if there were another parent there waiting to adopt the child, then that would have been acceptable).
I support the continuing contact between the biological parent (with his/her consent) and the child, provided the parent is clean and sober. That doesn’t mean that the child should be disrupted from the family he has lived with since birth.
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