Word: schmidts
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...surprising wrinkle in the DeBoer-Schmidt case is that it turns more on a father's willingness to relinquish his child than a mother's. Dan Schmidt's quest has raised issues that to date remain largely unresolved. The first question adoption agencies ask birth mothers is whether the baby's father will consent to giving up the child. If the mother doesn't know, some agencies will refuse the case in order to avoid possible court battles. Private adoptions such as the DeBoers' are less strict. More of these may be in jeopardy, says Mary Beth Seader, vice president...
...homemaker, had no right to keep the baby they have tried to adopt for more than two years, it lit a long, scorching fuse on a time bomb. The DeBoers were given a month to turn her over to her biological parents in Iowa, Dan and Cara Schmidt. This afternoon they have 26 days left...
...within days, it all began to unravel. Cara saw her ex-boyfriend Dan Schmidt at work and told him everything -- that the baby she had just given up for adoption had been his all along. She began having second thoughts. She went to a support-group meeting of Concerned United Birthparents and heard other mothers' stories of the sorrow they felt at giving up their babies. On March 6 Cara filed a motion to get her daughter back, and a week later Dan did as well. Cara went out shopping for baby clothes...
...Iowa court declared that it could not and should not pay attention to the best interests of the child, that the only issue at hand in this case was the father. The Michigan Supreme Court deferred to Iowa's decision. Only if Daniel Schmidt was found to be unfit as a parent could the courts consider the rights of the little girl. This approach has made adoption advocates draw back in fury. "When you're dealing with a child who has had a 2 1/2-year relationship with a set of de facto parents," says Harvard law professor Elizabeth Bartholet, author...
...living as a bohemian in California. States everywhere reacted by writing laws to clarify paternal rights -- and Iowa wrote one declaring that biological parents have custodial rights unless a child has been abandoned. Only then are "the best interests of the child" considered. That meant that Daniel Schmidt, who never abandoned Jessica, had custodial rights, period. The Schmidts couldn't lose in Iowa, and when the DeBoers took the case to Michigan, they couldn...