Ron Reigns:
Welcome. Thank you for joining us on, Birth mother Matters in Adoption with Kelly Rourke-Scarry and me, Ron Reigns, where we delve into the issues of adoption from every angle of the adoption triad.

Speaker 2:
Do what’s best for your kid and for yourself, because if you can’t take care of yourself, you’re definitely going to be able to take care of that kid, and that’s not fair.

Speaker 3:
I know that my daughter will be well taken care of with them.

Speaker 4:
Don’t have an abortion. Give this child a chance.

Speaker 5:
All I could think about was needing to save my son.

Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
My name is Kelly Rourke-Scarry. I’m the executive director, president and co-founder of Building Arizona Families adoption agency, the Donna K. Evans foundation and creator of the You Before Me campaign. I have a bachelor’s degree in family studies and human development and a master’s degree in education with an emphasis in school counseling. I was adopted at the age of three days, born to a teen birth mother, raised in a closed adoption and reunited with my birth mother in 2007. I have worked in the adoption field for over 15 years.

Ron Reigns:
I’m Ron Reigns. I’ve worked in radio since 1999. I was the co-host of two successful morning shows in Prescott, Arizona. Now, I worked for my wife who’s an adoption attorney, and I’m able to combine these two great passions and share them on this podcast.

Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
Birth father roles and their impact. Birth fathers can have a positive or negative impact on a birth mother’s adoption choice, her adoption plan, and her adoption journey. Regardless of whether or not the birth father is actually in a relationship with the birth mother, he can directly or indirectly influence her adoption plan.

Ron Reigns:
He should.

Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
In some aspects.

Ron Reigns:
I see it as we all want to be men or we all want to be good, responsible.

Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
You all want to be met.

Ron Reigns:
You all want to be men. I just think that it’s important for us to take responsibility for our choices.

Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
A hundred percent. I do, but we want you to be positive. Sometimes that’s not the case.

Ron Reigns:
That’s true. You’re right.

Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
I have seen situations where birth fathers come in and they’re doing the best they can and they’re trying, and they’re trying, and they’re trying. They’re trying to get their life together and get a job and be able to bring in the finances and turn their lives around so that they can be positive and have their family. It doesn’t always work that way.

Ron Reigns:
No.

Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
Sometimes acceptance is the hardest part. We have lots of women that come to us and the birth mother and the birth father, they’ve broken up. They’re not together anymore. Without his support, whether it be emotional, physical, financial, mental, that’s where a birth mother decides that adoption is the best choice for her and her unborn baby. The birth mother may have realized that her relationship is totally unstable and wants stability and longevity for her child. She wants a family that’s been married for years and years and years, rather than the on and off and on and off.

Ron Reigns:
Hopefully, will continue to be married for years and years and years.

Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
Agreed.

Ron Reigns:
Ideally, that’s what you want.

Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
Absolutely. On the other hand, I’ve also seen birth mother’s wish and desire for the birth father to learn about her adoption plan and swoop in on a horse, like a knight in shining armor and say, “No, no, no. We’re going to raise this baby. We’re going to ride off into the sunset until we hit our house with a white picket fence and the dog and the cat and the goldfish and the two kids, and we’re going to make this life and we’re going to be great.” Meanwhile, he is getting a bus token to go back to the shelter in downtown Phoenix, and she’s going to go wait in the food box line.

Ron Reigns:
Her dream is about as realistic as your dream as a kid, of having the castle.

Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
And my royalty lineage.

Ron Reigns:
Yeah.

Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
Other times, birth mothers may continue to be in a relationship with their unborn baby’s birth father, and he’s not in support. They’re constantly arguing and fighting about the adoption. She knows it’s the right thing. He’s insisting that he is going to step up to the plate and be the parent and that he will get a job next week. Until then, he’s just going to live in the housing, provided by the adoption and eat the food provided by the adoption. Next week, he’s going to start looking for it.

Ron Reigns:
Yeah. That’s when he’s going to buckle down and get serious.

Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
Next week, but then when next week comes and nothing’s changed, he’s still arguing with her as to why she would want to place the baby for adoption when he is going to get his life together. This is where actions speak louder than words. I don’t question anybody’s desire to want to parent their child. Sometimes their ability is not equal to their desire. When for nine months, you’re not working and you’re using illegal substances and child protective service has an open case and they removed your other children, parenting probably isn’t the best option, unless there’s external factors that are going to help and assist you. This is where we can live in planet fantasy or planet reality.

Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
Sometimes the birth mother will absolutely lock her knees and the birth father will state, “I’m not going to contest it, but I’m not happy that she’s doing this and that we accept.” When I’ve seen many, many birth mothers lock their knees and say, “No, I’m going to protect the baby. I don’t want my baby raised in a household with him.” She’ll point to the birth father. That’s so ironic to me that she would subject herself to that.

Ron Reigns:
Yeah. It’s okay for her to continue living with him. There is a disconnect in there.

Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
Right. I’m not one to question their relationship choice, but that speaks volumes.

Ron Reigns:
About her self-esteem.

Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
Again, self-esteem is paramount for an adoption. She has to believe she’s strong enough to do it. It’s paramount for her to break her own life cycles. If she doesn’t have self-esteem, she’s not going to be able to rebuild afterwards and move on into the world that she wants to live in. She’s going to stay in planet fantasy. We’ve got to shift that paradigm over to planet reality. Sometimes the birth mother will come in and have multiple birth fathers and they may or may not know about each other. That’s always a little bit of a circus because I’ve seen situations where both birth fathers are adamant that the baby is going to be theirs. The birth mother just has a grin in the middle like, “I don’t really know whose it is.”

Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
Sometimes in the very best scenarios, a bird father is very supportive of the birth mother, regardless of whether or not they’re in a current relationship. He’ll come to all the adoption meetings, be at the doctor’s appointments, be at the hospital. He will assist in choosing the adoptive family and he will develop his own relationship with them.

Ron Reigns:
That’s good, because it helps him become a part of it.

Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
That’s amazing. Oh, that’s beautiful. We have a very special guest joining us today. Lisa Simpson is an amazing adoption attorney. She works with our agency and actually has her own firm as well. She is also the beautiful wife of Ron and we’re so excited to have her.

Lisa Simpson:
Thank you, Kelly. It’s a pleasure to be here today.

Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
All right. We have some questions that we’d like you to weigh in on about birth fathers.

Lisa Simpson:
Okay.

Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
Lisa, can you tell us from a legal perspective, how you handle multiple birth fathers?

Lisa Simpson:
Each one has to be addressed individually and you may end up serving some of them personally. You may end up publishing on some of them. It’s still service, but a service by publication. There may be legal fathers. It may be a whole variety and a mix, but they each have to be dealt with individually. Essentially you repeat the same process for each father. You go through the… There’s a questionnaire that the mom fills out pertaining to each father as to their current or last known whereabouts, where the conception took place, any information about them. You have to repeat the process each time for the amount of fathers that are named in the process. Then you again, have to try and locate them and get them served individually. For any mothers that don’t name all the fathers, the putative father registry does cover that. If there are any names that the mother, anybody that the mom forgot to name, then their rights are still dealt with. It’s dealt with in a different way, but even unnamed fathers are dealt with as well.

Ron Reigns:
They do DNA tests?

Lisa Simpson:
No, they don’t need to do DNA tests. The law doesn’t require it. The law only requires that they be notified of the adoption and a right to be heard, if they want to file a paternity action. Those rights aren’t really related to adoption law. Those rights are actually constitutional rights for any type of case. There’s two rights, basic rights that everybody has under the constitution. It’s the right to notice and the right to be heard, so because these fathers have not established paternity, we don’t know whether they’re the actual fathers or not. That’s the basic constitutional right that they are entitled to as the right to notice on the right to be heard.

Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
In my experience, working with birth fathers, it’s always my favorite when you have a supportive birth father and he is right alongside the birth mother and helping choose the adoptive family and wants to sign adoption consents. What’s your experience?

Lisa Simpson:
It is a breath of fresh air when they are involved. Sadly to say, most of them aren’t. Sadly to say, most of them cannot be located. It does make the process more detailed, but when they are involved, it’s a nice thing for them.

Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
Yeah. It’s a really good source of support for the birth mothers. We’ve talked about birth fathers and their roles. Talk to me a little bit about, from your perspective, from a legal perspective, about legal fathers. What’s a legal father? I know the answer, but I want to hear it from an attorney so that our listeners can understand.

Lisa Simpson:
There are two types of legal fathers. There’s the one type of legal father where he is the biological father of the child. He’s also married to the birth mom. He’s her husband and he’s currently involved. That’s one type of legal father. There’s another type of legal father where he is not the biological parent. However, the law presumes him to be the legal father for a couple of different reasons. The law states that if the birth mother is married, if she’s married at the time of conception or at the time the child’s born, within that period, then the law presumes the husband as the biological parent, even though he isn’t the biological parent. They call him the legal parent. Another way of becoming a legal parent is if he gets put on the birth certificate. Now, the only way you can be put on the birth certificate is if the mom signs it acknowledgement of paternity and the person that she wants to add on the birth certificate, signs an acknowledgement of paternity as well.

Lisa Simpson:
Those have to be notarized. If they do, regardless of whether he’s the biological father or not, he becomes the legal father. Now, the problem with the legal fathers that we have run into is, even though they’re not the bio father, because they have the status of the legal father, they either have to sign a consent or their rights have to be terminated. Sometimes that can complicate the process. Then as you know, it can complicate the process even more if you have a situation where the Indian Child Welfare Act is involved.

Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
The legal father aspect is really truly one more layer.

Lisa Simpson:
It is one more layer.

Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
In my experience, I have seen married couples where there is a birth mother and legal father, and they are legally married and they have decided that they cannot parent one more child, maybe due to their age, their finances, their life circumstances. I’ve seen that. Have you seen that much in your practice?

Lisa Simpson:
I’ve seen it. It doesn’t happen all that often. The more common situation, sadly, is where there’s a biological father, but the mother is still married to someone else who’s not the biological father.

Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
I’ve seen that as well.

Lisa Simpson:
I know the mothers view it as a ridiculous law, but there’s nothing we can do about it because it is the law. That happens a lot.

Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
Yeah. What would you say to birth fathers out there that are deciding whether or not to be a part of the adoption plan and to adoptive families who are dealing with the birth father situation? What’s your best advice?

Lisa Simpson:
Well, just like the birth mothers, if you can be involved in the process, it’s going to make it an easier situation. Just because it may be the right decision to do, doesn’t mean it’s an easy one. Engaging in the process, it helps you be a part of it. It will help with healing. even though you may not want to deal with the situation now, you know, down the road, you may have different feelings and regret that you didn’t be involved in it, especially if you are the biological parent, then it’s a nice to have a say in the matter. If you’re not involved, did you don’t have the same rights as a birth mom, as far as do you have a post-adoption communication agreement and same contact with the family and the child down the road. My advice is there’s no need to… I think a lot of birth fathers have fears.

Lisa Simpson:
I think they fear that somehow, they’re going to end up actually being involved or being out of the Hawk or paying child support for the child, instead of just the opposite. They don’t understand that, it’s a process where their parental rights are terminated and someone else is adopting that child. There’s nothing to fear about it, if you agree with the adoption. It’s just the opposite. I think some of them, if they have a criminal background, they fear that somehow that’s going to come out and there’s no need to fear any of that. It’s a confidential process. Again, it’s a process that is a, it can be as you know, a completely incredible, wonderful experience for everybody.

Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
Thank you so much for joining us. I hope you will come back again soon.

Lisa Simpson:
Yes, I would love to. Thank you.

Kelly Rourke-Scarry:
For all of our listeners, thanks for staying with us and we’ll see you next time.

Ron Reigns:
We have a pregnancy crisis hotline available 24/7 by phone or text at (623) 695-4112. Or you can call our toll-free number (800) 340-9665. We can make an immediate appointment with you to get you to a safe place, provide food and clothing and started on creating an Arizona adoption plan or give you more information. You can check out our blogs on our website at AZpregnancyhelp.com.

Ron Reigns:
Thank you for joining us on, Birth mother Matters in Adoption, written and produced by Kelly Rourke-Scarry and edited by me, Ron Reigns. If you enjoy this podcast, rate and review us wherever you listen to podcasts. As always thanks to Grapes for letting us use their song, I Don’t know, as our theme song. Join us next time for Birth Mother Matters in Adoption, for Kelly Rourke-Scarry. I’m Ron Reigns, and we’ll see you.