Baby M Mom Admits Taking School Letter

The mother of “Baby M” today admitted she removed a damaging letter from her son’s school records as her legal battle to reclaim her infant daughter heated up last year.

Mary Beth Whitehead, under cross-examination in the landmark custody case, conceded that she took the letter from her son Ryan’s file and destroyed it without signing a document acknowledging her actions.

The lawyer for her opponents in the custody trial said the letter contained information that Whitehead’s parents told school officials in Florida that Ryan was put in their care temporarily because Whitehead was on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

Educated in Florida

Ryan was educated in Florida from the fifth to the eighth grades, then returned last spring to the home of Whitehead and her husband in Brick Township, N.J.

Whitehead said that at the time she took the document she was not aware that a court-appointed lawyer for Baby M had requested her children’s school records.

William and Elizabeth Stern, the childless couple who hired Whitehead to bear Baby M, sued Whitehead after she tried to back out of her $10,000 contract with them and retain custody of the now 11-month-old baby girl.

The trial is the first in the United States in which a judge must determine custody of a child born of a surrogate motherhood agreement.

Tuesday’s testimony, Page 12.