LANSING, MI (MPRN)— The Michigan Supreme Court will hear a challenge that could upend a law that allows birth parents to anonymously drop off newborns at a hospital, shelter, or other safe space.
The case deals with a complex set of facts that revolve around a couple’s troubled relationship, divorce and her decision to surrender the infant for adoption without naming her ex-husband as the father.
Two cases also proceeded simultaneously in two counties with a court in Ottawa County granting custody to the ex-husband as a judge in Kalamazoo County terminated his parental rights.
That was a surprise to Peter Kruithoff, the ex-husband, who did not find out his parental rights had been terminated until after the child had been placed with a family. Attorney Michael Villar told Michigan Public Radio that’s because the adoption agency made only a token effort find him.
Villar said that wasn’t fair to Kruithoff or the couple that adopted the child.
“Those are both terrible human tragedies and from our perspective, they could have been overcome had reasonable efforts been made to find my client and allow him to have his day in court about his parental rights with his child,” he said.
The Michigan Court of Appeals ruled for Kruithoff in a split decision handed down in August.
The child is now three years old and living with his adoptive family. Liisa Speaker is the attorney for the adoptive parents, and she says the appeals court decision in this case would break apart the only family the child knows.
“Part of the reason it’s fairly complex is because an adoption has already happened,” she said. “Usually if there is going to be litigation, that’s all going to be happening before an adoption occurs. Here it happened after the fact.”