Adoptive Parents Fight ‘Casual Father’ Custody Ruling

Lawyers for adoptive parents who face the loss of their 2-year-old son told the California Supreme Court Wednesday that it should reconsider an October decision expanding the custody rights of men who father children as a result of casual relationships.

The standard the high court set last fall in the custody case of a child identified only as Baby Girl M. gives too much weight to the rights of such “casual fathers,” the lawyers argued in the justices’ Los Angeles courtroom on Wilshire Boulevard.

In the Baby Girl M. case, the court, in a 5-2 decision, held that natural fathers, no matter how brief their relationship with the mother, have a right to a formal custody hearing before their child can be adopted, even though the mother wishes to give the baby away.

A judge can block a casual father’s claim, the Supreme Court said last fall, only if the judge determines that placement with the natural father would be “detrimental” to the child.

On Wednesday, lawyers for an Orange County couple, who for nearly two years have cared for a boy born out of a relationship between a 12-year-old girl and a 16-year-old boy, asked the court to adopt a different standard. The couple is appealing a lower court order granting custody of the baby to his natural father, who is referred to in court documents as Michael U.

Christian R. Van Deusen, who represents both the adoptive parents, Glenn and Gayle White of Irvine, and the boy’s natural mother, identified in court as Jamie B., said judges should decide the custody issue on the basis of the child’s best interests.

Van Deusen and David Keene Leavitt, an adoption lawyer who appeared as a friend of the court, argued that the Baby Girl M. decision gives casual fathers a “veto” over a mother’s decision to give up her baby and, as a result, has had a “devastating” effect on the adoption process in California.

But Winfield S. Payne III, who represents Michael U., said the high court was right in the earlier case. “Giving the father the right to get custody (by) applying the parental preference standard does not give him a veto,” Payne told the justices.

The child at the center of the current controversy was born April 27, 1983, to Jamie B., a San Bernardino County girl who had attended school with the boy’s father. When the child was conceived, Jamie was 12 and the father, Michael, was 16.

Lawyers for Jamie and the Whites contend that Michael, who has since married another woman, initially tried to persuade Jamie to have an abortion. Attorneys on the other side say Michael always wanted to raise the boy as his own.

Several days after the birth, Jamie and her mother turned the infant over to a Van Nuys adoption agency, according to court records.

About the same time, Michael’s mother, without notifying Jamie’s family, obtained a temporary guardianship for the child from a San Bernardino County Superior Court judge. When Michael’s mother went to the adoption agency with the order, she was told the child was no longer there.

Working through a bishop of the Mormon Church, to which they belong, Jamie and her mother had taken the boy from the agency and placed him in the care of the Whites, who then filed a formal adoption petition.

That fall, Michael filed a complaint in Orange County Superior Court, claiming that he was the child’s father and therefore should be awarded custody. Without stating his reasons on the record, Judge Philip E. Schwab on Dec. 12, 1983, ordered the boy turned over to Michael.

The California Court of Appeal subsequently turned down the Whites’ request to overturn the lower court decision, but the boy has remained in their custody pending a decision by the Supreme Court.

During Wednesday’s arguments, Van Deusen told the justices, “Adoptive parents also have rights. A loss of a child to them is a grievous loss.”