After 6 years, a hollow victory in Utah adoption fight

Lorraine

 Six years. That's how long Robert Manzanares has been fighting for custody of his daughter--a fight that began before she was born. A few days ago, a court decided that he, the father, would have joint custody of his daughter, Kaia, but the adoptive parents will have primary custody and the girl will continue to live with them. The length of time involved in getting to this decision is why Manzanares will not be able to raise his own daughter. How did we get here? Six years? 

This legal battle began in 2008, shortly after the girl was conceived and the girl's mother and Manzanares broke up. Aware that the mother did not want to raise the child, he took all the right steps, filing for his parental rights to be recognized...in Colorado where he and the mother had been living. He made it clear that he did not want his daughter given up for adoption. But the woman fled to Utah before the girl was born. She had Mormon relatives in that state who wanted to adopt the child. And in Utah, that is pretty much all you need: Mormons who want to adopt.

If LDS Family Services ends adoption, it won't be soon enough

Lorraine

UPDATE BELOW
As we described yet another LDS Family Services adoption scam yesterday, one designed to cut out the natural father, it is merely one more in a long link of such fraudulent adoptions that the state laws were designed, if not to condone, to promote. In Utah the laws make it difficult--if not impossible--for a father to raise his child if the mother chooses adoption. It is apparent that social workers, LDS (Latter-Day Saints) Family Services, an organization with dozens of adoption agencies world wide, but most particularly in Utah, the seat of the Mormon religion, are not interested in ethical adoptions, but speedy ones instead.

Adoption in Utah: No place for birth fathers

Lorraine

Sometimes justice for natural fathers in Utah is through the eye of a camel, or so it seems in the narrow ruling the other day that will allow a father to attempt to get his daughter back from the people who have been raising her since she was five days old. In a 3-2 decision, the Utah Supreme Court ruled that Utah's adoption law was "constitutionally defective" in depriving a Florida man, Ramsey Shaud, 26, a "meaningful chance" of developing a relationship with his child.

He's only been trying to have that meaningful relationship since before she was born in January, 2010. Yes, you read that right. She will be three in January.

Utah adoption laws becoming more hostile to birth fathers?

Jane

Robert Manzanares only wanted to nurture his new daughter. But for the past four years he has had to run the gauntlet of Utah’s byzantine anti-father adoption laws. Although the Utah Supreme Court ruled in his favor in January, he still faces more litigation before--if ever--he can have custody of his daughter.

Meanwhile the Utah legislature is on its way to passing a bill drafted with the assistance of the attorney who represented the adoptive parents in Manzanares’ case making Utah’s anti-father adoption laws ever harsher. SB 55 which passed the Utah Senate makes it legal for mothers-to-be to deceive fathers about their intent to place their baby for adoption.