Supreme Court: 'Baby Veronica' to return to adoptive parents

[cali]

The US Supreme on Friday refused to re-engage in a heart-wrenching dispute over who should gain permanent custody of a three-year-old child known in court papers as Baby Veronica – her biological father or the adoptive couple selected by the birth mother.

The high court’s refusal to take up the case opens the way for the girl’s transfer from her father in Oklahoma to the adoptive couple in South Carolina.

A South Carolina family court judge finalized the adoption on Wednesday and approved a proposed transition procedure designed to reduce any trauma to the child of being uprooted and sent to live with a new family.

Initially, the South Carolina courts had ruled in favor of the father in the custody dispute, citing a federal law, the Indian Child Welfare Act, that makes it difficult for non-Native Americans to adopt a child of Indian ancestry.

<snip>

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Justice/2013/0802/Supreme-Court-Baby-Veronica-to-return-to-adoptive-parents-video

Heartbreaking. The little girl spent the first 2 years of her life with the family she's being returned to but has been with her dad for the past year and a half. On the other hand he refused to pay any support for her and signed away his parental rights.

[Pab Sungenis]

1. This is a very thorny issue.

And I don't think any solution in the case is going to make everybody happy.

The father insists that he didn't intend to sign away his rights, but clearly did so. I think his case may have been an abuse of ICWA as well, and if the Court had ruled in his favor it might have eventually prevented any mother of a child with Native American blood from ever putting the child up for adoption.

Probably the best answer to an insoluble question.

[Heather MC]

2. I know a girl who signed over her parental rights on sheet of notebook paper

6 months later she changed her mind and wanted her baby back. The Judge ruled in favor of the adoptive parent.

It's sad he is losing custody but he had 9 months to man up. Perhaps the birth mother would have kept the baby if she thought the baby daddy was going to step up and help. but he signed the paper.