Trial

August 3, 2008 - Sunday
TRIAL
So what first happened with Alice and Anderson's is that they have been in care for 15 or more months and when that is the case, the state has to come up with a permanent plan for them. Which this happened last November and they changed the case plan from "family reunification" to "severance and adoption". The parents then have the right to contest the case plan which did in fact happen and then they are entitiled to a trial in which they have to argue why they should be able to keep their kids. Well we finally started the trial a couple of weeks ago, it was quite an emotional rollercoaster in ways that I could not even explain. The thought of them never being in foster care and being raised by their birth mom was so heart wrenching in itself. Not to mention that the birth mother's sister, whose name is Elizabeth Ann too btw so we will definitely be changing Alice's name, and the birth mother's grandmother was there and made a remark to us that they think it is ridiculous that someone has to steal other people's kids. What? Are you kidding? So it has nothing to do with the fact that the bio mom messed up and lost her kids. It is not like we made her do the things that she did so we could get the kids. Needless to say, they just have to blame other people for their own mistakes and Mike and I found this amusing so we just let it roll off of us. Some other comments were made in the court room in front of the judge about us but we will just leave that alone because it is not even worth the attention. Okay so I can't get into too much detail because it is all confidential but basically you only need one ground to terminate the parent's rights and the state has three grounds. So the trial was still not finished, they still had more witnesses so we had to schedule it two weeks out which was this past Thursday. In the meantime, bio mom suggested that she would agree to severance if we would agree to send letters and pictures a couple of times a year and allow one visit with her per year. This would require us to sign a post adoption agreement but it could be broken if we found that it was not in the kids' best interest. The other thing is that we would have had to sign our names which would have been court sealed and then everyone would have got a copy with anonymous in our signature area. Just to clarify, the birth family does not currently know anything about us including our name. Okay so here were our concerns, or rather more me since I overthink everything.
1. Absolutely no personal visit, out of the question, are you crazy? For one thing, it is too disruptive to the kids and could affect their emotional wellbeing, also it is not safe, especially considering birth mom's past. Again, Are you crazy? I would be embarrassed to even ask something like that if I were her.
2. I would have been fine with sending pics and letters if it meant to get this over with right now, but then I started thinking about the times when I would have to sit down and write those letters and be reminded that these are not our bio children when we want to raise them like they are no different then if we would have created them ourselves.
The other thing about this which the kids' attorney agreed is that we will have an advantage that they are going to grow up and their looks will change but if we send pictures, she will know what they look like.
Furthermore, I didn't want to sign something that is legally binding and have us be the victim if we broke the agreement when all we are trying to do is provide a normal upbringing for these kids. Also lets not forget the fact that people make mistakes and that the court could send the wrong document out that had our names on it and then she would be able to track us down.
Okay so on the flipside, if we don't sign an agreement and she doesn't agree to severance, we run the risk of going to the trial and the judge ruling that she get another chance to raise her kids. Either way, agreement or no agreement, once the trial is over, she can still appeal the ruling and prolong everything another year.Well I like to say that I let God lead me on what to do because it is so hard, it is really like gambling. It was worth it to send letters and pics to get it over with and not have to go through an appeal but at the same time, it was worth it to go through the appeal to not have to send letters and pics and have contact with her so that we could get on with our lives and be in a healthy state of mind for the kids. Well what ended up happening is that the attorney told her that we would agree to send letters and pictures but that we wouldn't sign anything and she didn't agree so they went on with the trial and finished. The judge has 60 days to make his ruling. For now we just sit and wait and pray.
If the judge rules to terminate the parent's rights, the bio mom can appeal that and then it will take some time, mostly for paperwork for that to be addressed. There is a 1% chance that the judges' ruling would get overturned, but with all the documentation he will have to support his decision, I feel sure that we will be in 99%.