Challenge to Adoption of Child of Undocumented Mother

From KOAM TV in Missouri:

The Missouri Supreme Court is now weighing the facts of a case that will decide the fate of a 4 year old Carthage boy.

Attorneys argued the appeal of his adoption before the justices and a packed courthouse.

Attorneys for the biological mother claim the law was not followed strictly and should be when a fundamental right like motherhood is at stake.

Attorneys for the adoptive parents contend the boys mother, an undocumented immigrant, abandoned him and not just because she was in jail.

A year passed before Encarnacion Romero’s rights were terminated.

Her attorney, Chris Huck, says there should have been an investigation to see if Romero was a fit parent before that happened.

The attorney of the boy’s adoptive parents, Rick Schnake, says all attempts to reach Romero were foiled by her choice to use an alias even in jail.

Huck says the government determined which name she used there.  He contends she never abandoned her child and documents prove she made calls looking for him, while attorneys for the adoptive parents contend Romero could have called Melinda and Seth Mosher of Carthage, but did not.  And she also made no written attempts to parent him while in jail.

“Even a child who can’t read would appreciate having card or letter from the parent read to him,” says Schnake, the attorney for the Mosher’s.  “If she could afford to buy stamps she could afford to send a little child support – a dime or 20 cents.  That didn’t happen.”

Huck, the attorney for the biological mother, says they have provided an affidavit that includes phone records from the sheriff showing hundreds of calls she made to people she believed had the baby.

Briefs in the case are more than 100 pages long and those lists of phone numbers are actually documents filed outside of the trial case record.  So the justices must decide whether or not they will consider them when deciding the case.

It is part of evidence entered by Romero’s team, which also contends she did not have adequate legal representation in the case. Read more…

bh