Baby Is Object of Adoption Tug of War

Until recently, Andy’s life had been simple.

The chubby 11-month-old loves to play with his cat, splash in his tub and sit on his mom’s lap for his nightly bedtime story. When he awakes from his naps, he gazes at an old pepper tree just outside his window that makes his room seem like it’s nestled in branches.

But Andy has another identity and another mother who loves him and wants him back. A battery of judges, lawyers and Los Angeles County social workers have all played a part in sorting out who will be able to call the boy their son.

Andy is the object of a bitter adoption fight that has pitted a San Fernando Valley couple, who have raised him since birth, against his 16-year-old biological mother, who lives in a group home in the Valley.

The couple--Craig is a teacher and Martha a speech therapist--say they cannot imagine life without Andy.

“It’s absolutely maddening . . . ,” said Martha, who asked that her family’s last name not be used. “We are the parents of the child. Any rational mind can see that.”

But the teen-ager, through her attorney, contends that she changed her mind about relinquishing her son just a few days after his birth. Her lawyer, Theodore S. Goodwin, accuses the couple’s original attorney of “fraud, coercion and unethical conduct” in ignoring his client’s wish to cancel the proposed adoption.

The emotional dispute is an example of an independent adoption gone awry--something that rarely happens in California, where 2,800 independent adoptions are expected to be completed this year.

In an independent adoption, a couple does not find a child through an agency or the county’s Department of Children’s Services, but instead passes the word through an informal network of friends, relatives, obstetricians and even hairdressers who might know of the rare pregnant woman who doesn’t want to keep her baby.

The battle for Andy has generated six legal cases and has prompted opposing attorneys to accuse each other of gross conflicts of interest.

The couple’s attorney, Christian R. Van Deusen, who handles contested adoption cases across the country, was so incensed by the way the case has been handled, he complained about it at a public hearing conducted recently on the county’s beleaguered foster care system.

If the unwed teen-ager succeeds in regaining her son, Andy will be placed in a foster home until she is able to care for him, court records indicate. The mother is a ward of Juvenile Court, records show, and she lives in a residential rehabilitation facility for troubled youths. The reason she is in the Juvenile Court system remains confidential.

The teen-ager, who declined through her attorney to be interviewed, hopes to raise the boy herself after he’s been in the foster care system for 1 to 1 1/2 years, court records indicate.

But taking the baby out of the only home he knows would be a travesty, said Van Deusen, who contended in a court brief that a child “cannot suddenly be transplanted like a dogwood tree.” Further, he said, the boy could be endangered in the county’s foster care network, which recently was criticized by the state for being incapable of protecting children from substandard conditions and sexual and verbal abuse.

“You read about 10 children sleeping on a garage floor and infants doubled up in bassinets because the system doesn’t have enough money, and now they use the system to do an end run on a child that is absolutely safe and secure,” Van Deusen said.

But Goodwin, who declined to be interviewed at length, said the baby belongs to his client because she changed her mind about the adoption immediately. Her wishes, however, were never honored, he said, and “it got entirely out of hand.”

Nobody was contemplating a legal donnybrook a year ago when Martha and Craig met the expectant mother at a restaurant. The pretty, blond-haired teen-ager had learned of the couple through her obstetrician, who is a family friend of the couple. She selected them after reading their resume--they had circulated hundreds of them throughout Los Angeles. Their hobbies--camping, skiing, bicycling, horseback riding and hiking--were what caught her eye, she told them.

They learned about her too. She liked sewing, shopping and roller-skating. She had been a junior lifeguard and a track team member, court records indicate. The teen-ager was a B student whose favorite subjects were art and history. She hadn’t decided whether she would go on to college.

In a questionnaire she filled out before the birth--now part of the court records--she explained why she had decided to give up her child. “We love each other,” she wrote of her relationship with her boyfriend, “but we are too immature and young to raise a child. We are unprepared.”

“I want my baby to have a happy family to ensure his/her own happiness forever,” she wrote. “I cannot raise my baby by myself. He/she needs a complete family and stable parents.”

At the delivery on April 21, Martha held the teen-ager’s hand through the pain of childbirth and was handed the tiny wrinkled baby when the delivery was over.

“I was breathless, speechless,” Martha said. “It was one of the most wonderful things in my life.”

The next day, the couple arrived with the baby at their pink two-story Victorian house with wrap-around front porches and a spectacular view of the Santa Monica Mountains. Their four-year attempt to become parents seemed over, but records show that the biological mother was agonizing over her decision.

On April 24, the distraught mother called Lindsay Kohut Slatter, the attorney who handled the placement for the couple, and said she wanted the baby back. In a sworn declaration, Slatter said she never told the teen-ager she could not retrieve the baby.

For the next three days, according to the attorney’s statement, the teen-ager talked to her mother, her juvenile case worker, her therapist and Slatter many times and decided she wanted to move into a foster home with the baby.

But then the teen-ager suddenly changed her mind, Slatter said. On April 27, the attorney said, the teen-ager “was apologetic, sweet and sounded relieved of an emotional burden.” Reiterating her desire to receive photos of the baby occasionally, the teen-ager said the infant could remain with the couple.

In November, a hysterical woman, who Slatter said she believed was the biological mother, called Slatter’s office screaming and cursing.

Goodwin, a private attorney who was retained by the county to represent the birth mother in her juvenile delinquency matter, is also helping the teen-ager fight for custody of the baby.

Van Deusen said that the biological mother’s chances of regaining her child seem better because she got in trouble with the law, thereby making an attorney’s services available to her.

Goodwin has so far managed to thwart the couple’s attempt to complete the adoption process in Superior Court and instead has kept the matter in Juvenile Court.

Until this month, the couple had been excluded from participating in the Juvenile Court proceedings because the court did not recognize their standing, Van Deusen said. The couple could not legally intervene in the confidential juvenile proceedings because technically they were not related to Andy. In fact, a bailiff once escorted the couple out of the courtroom during a hearing about Andy’s fate, Craig said.

Goodwin maintains that Juvenile Court is the proper place to resolve the case.

“The Juvenile Court came in because the Juvenile Court saw the mother was being taken advantage of,” Goodwin said.

The child’s destiny might become clearer on April 9, when the Juvenile Court judge is expected to hear the recommendations of the Children’s Services Department. In a report filed with the court, a county adoption worker said the baby is “an adorable, responsive youngster,” who is “well-loved and nurtured.”

Meanwhile, under court order, Andy has been visiting with his biological mother once a week since February.

“It is unbelievably stressful,” Craig said of the wait. “On top of that, there is a need to maintain an equilibrium about the birth mother. It’s important to maintain positive thoughts about the birth mother. . . . She’s as much a victim and pawn of this as we are.”