I’ve spoken to a variety of attorneys in the last few days about the potential for making Sprout our legal ward rather than adopting her. Doing so would preserve the legal familial bond she has with her mother and siblings, and would avoid the need for her to get a new birth certificate that erases her actual birth history. However, I think we’ve hit an impassible roadblock.
The attorney I spoke with this morning was blunt: it can’t legally be done.
There is a law that prohibits foster parents from petitioning for custody of children in their care. This does make sense to me because we don’t want foster parents trying to circumnavigate the foster care system and get legal custody of children who would otherwise potentially be returned to their parents. But it sucks in this circumstance where what we are trying to do is ethical. We are trying to prevent legal severing of the family ties.
So what about making us “fictive kin” so we can do a kinship guardianship? Yeaaaah, we don’t qualify because we met Sprout when she came to us through the foster care system. We would have had to have known her prior to that for us to be fictive kin.
The attorney said in some counties it is done – they just sort of ignore these legal provisions and make foster parents legal guardians. But it’s NOT LEGAL. And if it were challenged the guardianship would fail and the child would go back to the legal parent I guess? Regardless, if it’s not legally allowed it’s not a road I want to explore – too many unknowns and potential problems.
So I’m waiting to talk to the County folks again, but it looks like adoption is the only way to go. My heart is heavy with all of this. It’s not that I don’t want to adopt Sprout – I do wholeheartedly want her as my daughter – it’s just that I don’t want adoption to have to cost her so damn much emotionally down the road. Or her Mama.
In short, I need a therapy appointment or ten, and need to find a way to make my peace with an uncertain and challenging system and situation that doesn’t have any good answers. Its kind of par for the course in foster care.
On a happier note, sort of, I had my ankle reconstruction surgery on Tuesday and am home recovering. My little Sprout may follow in Seth’s nursing footsteps. She put me to bed last night by straightening and tucking in all the covers and kissing my forehead and rubbing my back. Literally. The. Cutest. Thing. Ever. To. Have. Happened. My god I love this kid! I guess the most essential thing in all this is that she’s thriving and happy and loved.
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