Native American roots trump in adoption battle over toddler

[Snake Alchemist]

CHARLESTON, South Carolina (Reuters) - The parents of a 2-year-old Cherokee girl adopted at birth are fighting to get her back after a court ruling based on Native American heritage allowed the biological father she has never known to take her away on New Year's Eve.

Authorities took Veronica Capobianco from Matt and Melanie Capobianco of Charleston, South Carolina, on December 31 and turned the toddler over to father Dusten Brown, a member of the Cherokee Nation who had sued for custody under the federal Indian Child Welfare Act.

The Capobiancos legally adopted Veronica at birth through an open adoption in Oklahoma in 2009, said the couple's spokeswoman, Jessica Munday.

"Matt cut the umbilical cord, and they were the first people to hold her," Munday told Reuters in an interview on Sunday.


http://news.yahoo.com/native-american-roots-trump-adoption-battle-over-toddler-192629408.html

[ProgressiveProfessor]

2. I have very mixed feelings on the Indian Child Welfare Act

[Snake Alchemist]

5. I do not believe this is what it was intended for. nt.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

6. Yet it is often the governing law in some situations

Have to wonder what the outcome would have been if there had not been bloodline issue.

[Snake Alchemist]

7. I imagine it would have been very different.

This will likely scar the child for life. I would feel different if the child were abducted, but the adoption was completely legal.

[yellerpup]

3. The biological father started trying to get her back

within weeks of agreeing to the adoption. It must be heartbreaking for the Capobiancos to lose their adopted child but she is with her father after two years of his fighting to get her back. The adoptive couple must have known this was a possibility. Blood trumps paper.

[Snake Alchemist]

4. Maybe you missed this

"Before the gag order was requested, Matt Capobianco told local WCIV-TV: "It's awful. Everybody keeps saying how bad they feel for us, but she's a 2-year-old girl who got shoved in a truck and driven to Oklahoma with strangers."

"I wonder what she's doing, if she's afraid, and we wish we could be there if she's afraid," Melanie Capobianco told the news station."

I would think the well-being including the emotional well-being of the child would trump everything else.

[yellerpup]

8. I feel very badly for the adoptive parents.

They will never forget her, but because she is only two years old, she won't remember them. No one would have come to retrieve her at any time of the day or night if her father had not won custody of her in court. The only reason I can think of why she would be taken in the middle of the night is that the authorities might have suspected the adoptive parents would 'run' with her or hide her. The adoptive parents would have been notified at the very least that custody had been awarded to her natural father. They have been fighting about from two weeks after the adoption. As wrenching as it must have been for the adoptive parents to lose the case, the child is young and will adapt. Her emotional well-being is being tended by her father and her extended family.

[Snake Alchemist]

9. So now your suspicious of the adoptive parents?

Would you feel this same way if this was a normal adoption? How long should the parents have to redecide?

[LadyHawkAZ]

10. When I put my son up

the adoption also went across state lines, so we had to do 2 sets of consent papers- one for California, one for Nevada. Ca. had a much longer back-out period then Nv. did, but we were both informed that we were subject only to the shorter time period and really needed to think about it BEFORE we signed those papers. I'm wondering if this might be why they chose to abuse the Native American law in this way- if the waiting period might have expired.
Having seen, not to mention spent an hour signing, the mountains of paperwork required for adoption, I find the idea that he didn't know what he was signing a bit hard to swallow. it's a little hard to miss.
ETA: with months to decide before birth, I think a one-day back-out is plenty.

[yellerpup]

11. I'm not suspicious at all.

The adoptive parents in this situation sound like a dream come true for any child. There is nothing 'wrong' with the adoptive parents. The article at the link gives few details about the natural parents, so we are only hearing one side story. The father is Cherokee. Our tradition is gadugi, or "everybody paddles" meaning that everybody works and no one gets left behind. If the child were yours, how soon would you give up?

[Snake Alchemist]

12. I would not sign off on the adoption in the first place.

This will have lifelong consequences for the child.

[yellerpup]

13. Hopefully, good consequences

for everyone involved.

[Snake Alchemist]

14. Doubtful.

Tribalism and these arcane laws will be the death of us all. Can you imagine if this was a white father trying to take this child away from loving black parents because she should be with her own kind? Just as hideous.

[yellerpup]

15. Ironic hyperbole.

I think that you are missing the fact that the child will be going to a family that loves her and indisputably wants her in their lives. She will never have to wonder if her father loves her, because she will know that he fought for her. She will know who she is in the deepest sense. You mentioned upthread that your concern was for the child, but I notice you are trying to make it about race. Just as hideous.

[Snake Alchemist]

16. I think the fact that the father gave her up

Flew past you. Apparently he did not love her as much as the adoptive parents. But he's the right color?

[countryjake]

17. As usual, this Yahoo piece is reeking of sensationalism...

per the title of the article and the skewing of pertinent facts relating to this case. Why is this father's two years of battling to be re-united with his biological child barely even considered, when the piece so dramatically highlights the anguish the adoptive family are suffering because of her removal from their custody?

And why did the Capobiancos persist in legally fighting to retain custody in the first place, two years ago, if they were so concerned with her well-being and the psychological effects that being "shoved in a truck and driven to Oklahoma with strangers" might have on a two-year old little girl, as opposed to what effect it would have had on an infant, when Brown first began his petition for custody of his own daughter?

Whose fault is it that this child's biological father is someone that "she has never known", really?

[Snake Alchemist]

18. Do you have any idea how long it takes to be approved for adoption in the 1st place? nt