Adoptee birth records bill advances to full House
A House committee voted 11-2 Monday in favor of passage of a bill that would provide thousands of adopted Hoosiers with access to their birth and adoption records.
Adoption
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Senate passes adoptee birth-records bill
Advocates for granting Indiana adoptees access to their birth certificates appear on the way to victory this year after years of trying.
Bill to open adoption records passes Senate committee
A proposal to expand access to sealed adoption records for adoptees is headed to the Indiana Senate floor after winning unanimous approval from a Senate committee.
Adoption records, gun licensing reform bills to be heard this week
Hoosier adoptees will make a new push for access to their birth records, beginning with a hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee Wednesday.
Judge reaches out to children with annual toy adoptions
Clark Circuit Court No. 4 Judge Vicki Carmichael has hosted the toy adoptions since 2007, taking over the tradition Clark Circuit Court No. 2 Judge Buzz Jacobs started decades ago.
Indiana adoption advocates to push again to open up records
The leader of an advocacy group for Indiana adoptees says she's optimistic state lawmakers will endorse a bill to expand adoptees' access to sealed records.
Justices block Alabama court order in lesbian adoption case
The U.S. Supreme Court has sided with a lesbian mother who wants to see her adopted children, blocking an Alabama court's order that declared the adoption invalid.
Pence designates November as ‘adoption awareness’ month
Gov. Mike Pence has declared November is Adoption Awareness Month in Indiana. The Republican governor and first lady Karen Pence are hosting an adoption fair at the Statehouse between 4 and 6 p.m. Monday.
Lawsuit: DCS illegally slashes subsidies if special-needs kids adopted
A lawsuit filed Thursday claims the Indiana Department of Child Services violated federal law when it proposed to slash assistance for three profoundly disabled children after their grandparents who served as foster parents planned to adopt them.
Study panel recommends opening adoption records
A legislative study committee Tuesday recommended opening records to thousands of Hoosiers born before 1994 who cannot access their own birth certificates.
Study panel to hear proposal to open adoption records
Whether some 350,000 adopted people born between 1941 and 1993 should be allowed access to their birth certificates – and knowledge of who their biological parents are – will be considered Tuesday by a legislative study panel.
Adoption affirmed due to biological dad’s lack of communication
A child’s biological father with a long history of incarceration for crimes including burglary and forgery lost an appeal of the child’s stepfather’s adoption petition.
Adoption reversed: Putative father wrongly denied genetic testing
A child born to a married couple who placed the newborn for adoption may have had a different father, and a trial court erred in denying his requests for genetic testing that could have given him standing to contest the adoption, the Court of Appeals ruled Wednesday.
Justices strip adoption, reinstate statute COA struck down
An adoptive maternal grandmother who the Court of Appeals ruled provided care in her grandchildren’s best interests despite a 1997 neglect conviction is legally barred from adopting them, the Indiana Supreme Court ruled. Justices also rebuked a COA determination that the statute was unconstitutional as applied.
Justices: Adoption agency didn’t breach duty to couple
The Indiana Supreme Court ruled 4-1 in favor of an adoption agency that it did not have any duties with respect to the putative father registry in excess of statutory requirements. A couple who adopted a baby through the agency – only later to have her removed from their care after the biological father contested the adoption – sued the agency alleging negligence.
Mother’s failure to timely contest adoption dooms appeal
A woman who failed to give notice to the court within 30 days after learning her child’s stepmother sought to adopt the child could not convince the Indiana Court of Appeals that her due process was denied in the matter.
Pence objection blocks adoptees’ birth-record access, advocates say
Gov. Mike Pence’s objections to a bill that would open the birth records for hundreds of thousands of adult Hoosiers thwarted chances it will pass the General Assembly this session, according to proponents who said they have been informed the bill will receive no further hearings in the House of Representatives.
Court of Appeals finds no standing post-adoption, suggests legislative remedy
An Indiana appeals court empathized with a grandmother’s situation, but it ruled the law gave the court no choice but to strip her of visitation with her granddaughter, whose mother – the grandmother’s daughter – had died.
Appeals court strips grandmother’s visitation, cites grandchild’s adoption
An Indiana Court of Appeals panel Friday stripped a maternal grandparent of visitation rights, finding she had no standing to seek visitation. The parents of the child had divorced, and the father remarried shortly after the mother’s death.
Bill to open adoption records moves forward
Indiana has nothing to fear from abandoning long-established practice and following the lead of numerous states in order to allow some 350,000 adopted Hoosiers access to their birth records, a leading national advocate said.