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Attorneys'
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| Question:
I am a 24 year old female.
I was adopted at birth. My adoptive parents have steadfastly refused to tell me anything
about my birth parents. They say that they know nothing, but I'm not sure I believe them.
Regardless, I feel that I must try to locate my birth-parents. I know the hospital where I
was born and my date of birth, but nothing more. I have a good job, but money does not
come easily. How much would it cost to locate my birth-mother or birth-father? |
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| Kaplan
Responds: |
 | You only ask one question,
"How much would it cost
to locate my birth-mother or birth-father?" I believe that you should be asking a second question,
"Should I undertake this search at all?" There are things that suggest you
should try to forget it and walk away from the who idea! The following are the types of
questions you should be asking yourself.
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| Are my adoptive parents
jealous or are they trying to protect me? |
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| Is going on this quest
going to damage my relationship with my adoptive parents? |
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| Regardless of your
adoptive parent's knowledge or motivation, your birth parents are a complete unknown. What
if you find your birth mother and learn that she is a drug addict and a broken down
prostitute? After you say "Hello!" and "All is forgiven!" What do you
say, "How's tricks?"? What if you find your birth-father and learn that he is an
habitual criminal who is doing 15 years for armed robbery of a convenience store. What do
you have in common with him, your exciting visits to 7-11 stores? |
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| What if your birth parents
are good, decent, people who have built a whole new life since you were born -- people
with children and grandchildren. Do you have a right to impose a new parameter on their
family structure? Do you really expect them to be overjoyed to be reunited with you?
Perhaps, but what if they make it clear that they want no part of you? How will that make
you feel? |
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| I hope I have made it
clear that you are about to embark on on a dangerous journey that could end up hurting a
lot of people -- including yourself. I know that it may not be possible, but you should
keep trying to bring your adoptive parents on board. You owe them every
consideration -- particularly honesty and openness. They may not favor the idea, but at
least you are not being a sneak. |
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| Several years ago an
adoptive-father retained us to find the birth-father who deserted my client's 30 year old
adopted daughter at birth. The daughter had asked my client to do that for her. It was a
very difficult locate and from the outset everybody knew it would be "close to
impossible". In due course we found the missing birth-father. Elated, I phoned
my client to give him the good news. Much to my surprise, he treated the news with dismay.
He said that he did not want the birth-father found! He hired us because his daughter
asked him to hire a PI. He knew that that this was a very difficult locate and hoped that
we would fail! He explained that when his daughter asked for this favor, he hoped to put
the issue to bed forever, by making a good faith effort. On the verge of tears, he
said that he was always very close to his daughter, but was deeply hurt by her search for
her birth-father, a worthless individual who did nothing for his wife and child for 30
years. I don't know if he ever gave his daughter the "good news". Either way,
his relationship with his daughter was forever changed. |
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| I haven't forgotten your
question, "How much
would it cost to locate my birth-mother or birth-father?" |
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| That kind of question must
always be answered in the context of what we know in the situation at hand. In this case,
the prognosis for success is very poor! You know where and when you were born, but that's
all. You believe that if you (or your PI) could get into the archives of the hospital or
the doctor who signed the birth certificate, you would be well on the road to
accomplishing the mission. You are probably right, but you would still be a long way from
reaching your goal. Depending on the PIs sources, launching a search of the archives could
cost a fortune. |
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| Let's assume you make it
to that level. Now what do you look for? Remember, 24 years ago computerization was not as
wide spread as it is today. So now you have to search a microfilm index of every patient
that was in that hospital the year you were born. The problem is that such indices are
almost always alphabetic. Since you do not have your birth-mother's last name and the
indexing would not be by date, you will probably have to search the entire year and note
each birth, both male and female. Before you could eliminate the males that were born you
would have to check each record. That would not be any extra effort because you have to
check each record to identify the mother of every female born the same day as you. Whether
you find 2 or 50, you have to copy down every available bit of information on each
mother that gave birth that day. |
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| Your continuing task now
becomes one of eliminating names from the list you prepared. This has to be done with
extreme care, lest you toss out the record of your birth. This alone could take weeks or
months of expensive and time-consuming investigation. Assuming you have done everything
right and have not literally thrown out the baby with the bath-water, you eventually have
a "short list" that includes the name you are searching for. Only now, does your
search for your birth-mother really begin. We all know that women get married and that
names change, but depending upon how much data you were able to glean from your
birth-mother's hospital records (home addresses, social security number, date of
birth, next of kin, etc.) your chances of success have improved radically. However, even
now, you are faced with the very expensive prospect of having to locate and
"check-out" every mother on your "short list". The cost of each of
those searches could vary greatly depending on the birth-mother's name. If it is something
like "Viara Vichigunov", you are not in bad shape, if it is a more common name,
like, "Kim Smith", you are looking at a lot more expense! |
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| The foregoing was not
meant to be a blueprint or formula for conducting such investigations. I was merely trying
to illustrate that in the real world, hiring a PI knowing only a date and place of birth,
would in most cases, be a very, very expensive way to go. |
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| Now, I am going to do the unthinkable,
I'm going to suggest you leap-frog 90% of the investigation set forth above and get
past the "short list" and all that preceded it. How do you do that?
You hire
a lawyer rather than a PI! Now, that is not just any lawyer. You are
looking for
a practitioner skilled in family and
adoption law, who has a
proven track record in the jurisdiction where you were born, of getting the courts to
unseal adoption records. Once you get that record, you are probably going to need a PI to
locate your birth-mother. Starting at that point, lets ask your question again, "How
much would it cost to locate my birth-mother or birth-father?" Go to our list of attorneys. |
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