My parents want to give up the teenager they adopted a few years ago. Can they do this?
I’m in my early thirties and have been living on my own for well over a decade. Four years ago, a sixteen year old, who I’ll call Ryan, was adopted by my parents from an Eastern European orphanage and came to the US to live with them and two of my biological siblings who still live at home. Ryan has mild fetal alcohol syndrome (he was never tested because my parents maintain a kind of arrogance about the input of “experts” and believe that everything will be okay with the Lord’s help. However, even without testing it is fairly clear that Ryan was affected, given that we know from the orphanage that his mother was an alcoholic). This developmental issue seems to have impacted his social skills and learning abilities, but not tremendously—he reads below grade level, but let’s also keep in mind that he arrived here four years ago not speaking a word of English, not to mention the emotional trauma of living in an orphanage from age 1 to age 12, not to mention that part of his problems interacting are due to hearing problems that remained untreated for years.
Aside form a lingering accent when he speaks, if you were to meet him, you’d think he was your average teenage boy, good hearted, dorky, occasionally socially inappropriate--- but not a fringe case, not the sort of violent or maladjusted teen who drives parents to consider “disrupting” their adoption (the industry euphemism for getting rid of an adopted child). I’ve seen him with children, with animals, with me and my other sisters, and he’s sweet. Any other family would get him testing, counseling, care. The problem—you guessed it-- is my parents. They were not in complete agreement about the adoption in the first place. My mom wanted it, but my father was more ambivalent. Their marriage was unstable at the time, and my father thought adopting a kid would keep my mother busy; my mother in turn thought adopting would give her some purpose in life. Cue the ominous music. To make matters worse, my father is in his late 60s. He’s tired and in recent years he’s been suffering chronic pain following some surgeries. If Ryan had been flawless, easy, perhaps everything could have been fine. But he is imperfect-- he’s stolen a few things: money from my mother’s wallet, a stack of DVDs from the library. Thanks to Ryan’s social awkwardness and inability to fit in right away (in my family fitting in = being quiet and obedient), my father never properly warmed up to him and these latest incidents convinced him, irrationally, that the kid is on some kind of downward spiral, headed toward a violent end. Recently the two of them got into a screaming match, each accusing the other of theft, and ending in my father banning him from the house. Ryan went to stay with a neighbor family, my father insisting he wasn't welcome back home. My parents then spoke with a Christian family services agency about sending him to a different family, and, amazingly, instead of insisting on family counseling, the agency set up a meeting with a foster family willing to take him in. The agency seems eager and compliant and willing to make all this ugliness go away (I wonder how much they're being paid) and has just advised my mother that these foster parents could be made into Ryan’s “guardians,” -- a simpler process than foster parent status, they tell my mother.
If you are wondering why my mother is going along with this decision, it’s because she is afraid of losing my father. She’s practically admitted as much. In spite of everything I say, she’s too overwhelmed and seems to have lost her ability to take a moral stand.
Can my parents legally deposit their child into the foster care system or assign someone else as his guardian? The foster/guardian process is being conducted through a Christian organization, and I have my doubts about the accountability of the process. They didn’t, for instance, consult the rest of the family about this. They took my parents' word.
I refuse to let a sibling of mine be disposed of, and will invite him to live with me, if necessary (although my parents disapprove of me - for religious reasons - and would probably put up a fight, preferring strangers over me).
What steps can I possibly take here? What's the legal basis for what they are doing?
posted by anonymous to law & government (23 comments total)
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posted by runningwithscissors at 9:47 AM on August 26