Long regarded as an afterthought in adoption-secondary to the child, the adoptive parents and the birthmother-birthfathers have found new inspiration in the epic legal struggle for custody of Baby Jessica. Although both media-savvy sides have framed it as a Solomonic dilemma-pitting birthparents, Dan and Cara Schmidt, against erstwhile adoptive parents, Jan and Roberta DeBoer-the case turns on a narrower point: whether Dan Schmidt, who didn’t know he was the baby’s father when Cara gave her up for adoption 26 months ago, can claim custody.
“It seems to me that we have a classic case of the thwarted father,” said Robert Robinson, who heads a national commission attempting to unify the patchwork of state adoption laws. Less than a generation ago, a “classic” case of fathers’ rights could not have arisen, since fathers were as scarce in adoption proceedings as they were in the delivery room. Back in 1970, when his son was placed for adoption, no one told Jim Shinn he had a right to be involved; the attitude was that fathers would just “make things sticky,” said Shinn, a parental-rights activist from El Centro, Calif. Interest in fathers’ rights is, in part, an outgrowth of the “unisexing” of many state laws, according to Daniel Polsby, a family-law professor at Northwestern University. But as birthfathers gain rights, birthmothers lose the right to decide on their own what to do with their babies.
But Dad is rarely even in the equation. Although there are no accurate statistics on the number of adoptions, the National Council for Adoption estimates that fewer than I percent of the cases are contested by fathers fighting to become part of their children’s lives. “Most times we can’t find these guys,” said council vice president Mary Beth Seader.
That was not the case with Dan Schmidt. When Cara Clausen gave birth to a girl in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, on Feb. 8, 1991, she was 28 and unmarried, too frightened to keep the baby and reluctant to tell Danby then her ex-boyfriend-that he was the father. So she lied, saying that the father was her new boyfriend, who, like Cara, quickly relinquished his parental rights. The baby was just 19 days old when Cara, torn by grief, told Dan the child was his. By then their daughter had been handed over to the DeBoers, an Ann Arbor, Mich., couple who had turned to Iowa in search of a baby because their own state is one of five that bar private adoptions.
Within a month, the battle lines were drawn: the DeBoers, who named the baby Jessica Anne, filed for adoption in Iowa (it was never finalized); Cara, who named the baby Anna Lee, asked the courts to restore her maternal rights (they were, two years later); and Dan, who has since married Cara, staked his own claim, arguing that he could not have given up a baby he didn’t know was his. “Robby DeBoer thinks I won’t be a good father because I have a dirt job,” Schmidt, a trucker, told The New Yorker. “Well, I’ll never give her up.”
The DeBoers dug in as firmly. “There’s no way I’m giving Jessi to that man!” Roberta DeBoer screamed when the Iowa District Court ruled last December that Schmidt had not abandoned his baby. She still hasn’t; conflicting rulings by courts in the two states have left Jessica in the custody of the DeBoers but in legal limbo. Prodded by a Des Moines-based adoption-reform group, Concerned United Birthparents, the Schmidts have prevailed in the Iowa courts, which have upheld Dan Schmidt’s rights as biological father. But arguing that it is in Jessica’s best interest to remain with the only parents she’s ever known, the DeBoers challenged them in Michigan, winning in the lower court but losing on appeal. Last week they petitioned the Michigan Supreme Court to hear an appeal. Robby DeBoer will not even entertain the idea of giving up, though in a phone interview from her home last week, she conceded, “It’s going to be hard” to prevail; the Schmidts, through their attorney, declined to be interviewed.
It’s a public-relations fight as well as a legal one. The latest issue: whether one side or the other has sold its story for vast sums. Though both couples have agents-an occupational requirement for families at the center of juicy dramas-both deny having signed a deal. “It’s a cruel world out there when it comes to the movie industry,” DeBoer said, contending that production companies play one family off the other. “I feel sorry for both of us on that.”
For all its notoriety, the Baby Jessica saga is not entirely typical of fathers’ rights cases. More common are cases like that of Jim Shinn, who didn’t attempt to come into his son’s life until the boy was much older. Shinn was 17 and involved with drugs when he fathered a child with his 15-year-old girlfriend in 1970, but by the time he learned of her pregnancy, they had broken up. In the end, he wasn’t sure what she had done with the baby-he heard her aunt was raising it, he heard he wasn’t even the father-so the easiest thing to do was bow out. It wasn’t until a decade later, when his wife was pregnant and Shinn feared, irrationally, that he could lose this child, too, that he set out to find his son, Clint. “I was mature enough to be willing to take the risk,” said Shinn, a junior-high-school counselor. Seven years after the reunion, Shinn says his relationship with Clint, 23, remains solid. Shinn says he never felt threatened that Clint calls his adoptive parents Mom and Dad and refers to him as “Jim.” “They are the psychological parents,” he says.
The issues have gained increasing attention in the last two decades, even from the U.S. Supreme Court. Since 1972, the high court has heard four major adoption cases that, collectively, have helped clarify the rights of unmarried fathers who have been involved with their children. But it has yet to take on the trickier rights of fathers who were never notified or were blocked from having a relationship.
One solution may be the sort of registry laws in effect in New York, Oregon, Utah and Arkansas that put the burden on the man to know if he’s fathered a child. Although a legal father is notified automatically if his mate places their child for adoption, a putative dad would be alerted only if he’s signed up in the state registry. The result: if he’s not around and not registered, he has waived his paternal rights. Whatever the piecemeal remedies, many agree that what’s needed are uniform adoption laws in all 50 states. But skeptics say that not even the best laws are proof against mothers who lie, as Cara Clausen did.
Which is why Jessica’s future is still in doubt as the DeBoers and Schmidts continue their tug of war over whose rights will prevail. “I believe all four people love her. They all believe they have her best interests at heart, but all their actions tell me that the people whose best interest they really have at heart are their own,” Patricia Johnston, an Indianapolis adoption expert said angrily. Sometime soon, a court will decide whether the dark-haired toddler will spend the rest of her childhood in the Cape Codstyle home in Ann Arbor or the house she’s never seen in Blairstown, Iowa.
