Personally I'd Hold an Auction

[Tecumsehsbones]

Baby Veronica’s loved ones wait for the Supreme Court to weigh in

Nowata, Okla., and Charleston, S.C. — There are two houses, a thousand miles apart, that each contain a child’s play kitchen, a wall of toys and portraits of the same dark-eyed, curly-haired little girl.

In one lives a couple named Matt and Melanie Capobianco, who cared for the girl from the time she drew her first breath until 27 months later, when the courts said she must be returned to her biological father.
And in the other house lives the father, Dusten Brown, who once tapped out a text message saying he’d give up rights to his daughter, but now embraces parenthood. His daughter, now 31 / 2 , shows off the room that Brown and his new wife have painted pink and purple.
“Her whole world as of this moment is me and my wife, it’s Mommy and Daddy,” said Brown.
The justices of the Supreme Court this week will take up the case of Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl and take on the role of Solomon to decide in which house Baby Veronica, as she has come to be known, should live.
Veronica’s birth mother chose the Capobiancos to raise the child, and in many states Brown as an unwed father would have little say. But because he is a member of the Cherokee Nation, the court will be considering once again the Indian Child Welfare Act.
It was passed in 1978 to end what Congress found to be a shameful practice of removing Indian children from their families and tribes and placing them in foster care and with non-Indian families. The law sought to keep Indian families together by erecting barriers to adoption outside the tribe.
The Capobiancos’ challenge goes to the continued viability of the law — whether Brown should be considered a “parent” under its terms and whether it applies to cases such as this one, where an Indian parent did not have custody of the child.
And the couple and their supporters also argue that Congress could not have wanted the law to be interpreted as putting the interests of the father and the tribe ahead of the child simply because of her race.
Veronica, whose mother is Hispanic, is “3/256th Cherokee,” Washington lawyer Lisa S. Blatt, who represents the Capobiancos, told the court in a brief.
“She deserves to be treated as a unique, multiethnic individual whose best interests are not inexorably dictated by her blood connection to a tribal member,” the brief said.
The case has set off alarms among the tribes, and some child welfare experts, who consider the law the “gold standard” in attempting to keep children with their biological parents. Nineteen states and the United States have filed briefs defending the law.
The Supreme Court has considered the act only once, 18 years ago, but with similar wrenching results. The justices overruled a state’s decision about twins who had been placed several years earlier with a non-Indian family and said tribes must have the final decision on adoptions involving those who live on reservations.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/baby-veronicas-loved-ones-wait-for-the-supreme-court-to-weigh-in/2013/04/14/7138b5f0-a526-11e2-a8e2-5b98cb59187f_story.html?hpid=z4



Here we go again.

 

[karrie]

He says he signed over parental rights rather than make child support payments. Done. End of story in my books. While I can see suing for visitation, I don't think he should have been able to strip the child from her adoptive family.

 

[Christianna]

He says he signed over parental rights rather than make child support payments. Done. End of story in my books. While I can see suing for visitation, I don't think he should have been able to strip the child from her adoptive family.

Especially now that the child is 3 and a half! If she were say 6 months old and he had never agreed to give up his parental rights, maybe, but not now.

 

[lone wolf]

Great "parenting" gimmick - wait until the 'terrible twos' are over. My advice to the guy would be quit with the headgames on the kid. If he REALLY loved her, he'd let her be happy.

 

[Tecumsehsbones]

Great "parenting" gimmick - wait until the 'terrible twos' are over.

Prolly woulda worked better if he'd waited till the terrible twos were over.

My advice to the guy would be quit with the headgames on the kid. If he REALLY loved her, he'd let her be happy.

Yeah, she's been so miserable for the 16 months she's been with her father and his wife that her happiness depends on being returned to the S. Carolina couple she probably doesn't even remember.

 

[petros]

jeeepers....