When your parents die, you tend to talk about it. A lot. I never expected that. We stopped talking to each other when I was 16. The more years that passed, the less I thought about them. When they died, I thought I would think about them a little and then move on. But quite a lot happened after their accident that forced me to think about them more now than I ever did while they were alive. All of their paperwork saw the light of day, revealing their deepest secrets. I learned that my grandfather left me his house when he died in 2006. If my real estate agent can sell it for the asking price, I will have a nice little nest egg, at least by today's standards. I have no intention of retiring in the next thirty years, and who knows how much anything will cost in the 2050s.
Then I was told that I was still on my father's life insurance policy. When that check eventually comes in, it will be nowhere near as much as the house. But it is free money. There are no taxes, fees, or commissions, and I will never have to pay anyone to install a kitchen sink in the life insurance.
In one final act of selfishness that backfired horribly against them, my parents accidentally gave me the greatest gift of all. And the biggest surprise. The life insurance was a tiny surprise. I never knew about it, though had I ever bothered to think about it, being on my father's life insurance policy almost makes sense. My grandfather's house came completely out of nowhere, but I always knew the house existed. I spent a lot of time there when I was younger. I simply thought my parents sold if off after he died. The biggest shock in all of this, and the one I never would have seen coming a million miles away, was that I was adopted.
This raises a great many questions.
Why did no one ever tell me? How did no one ever tell me? Maybe my parents were planning on telling me when I got older, but we had our falling out before it ever came up. In all those arguments, how did they never blurt out that I was adopted? Or maybe they did and I dismissed it as a heat of the moment interjection. Maybe at some point I said, “I wish I was adopted” and they said, “You were.” I would have never taken that literally. Call me old fashioned, but I think telling your child that she is adopted requires a sit down conversation. I have to consider the possibility that they were never planning on telling me.
Who are my biological parents? Or were. They could be dead by now, too. Why did they give me up? There could be a million reasons, most of which I would probably understand. But I still want to know. More curiously, why did the people I have always called my parents want to adopt me? They were never all that excited to have me around, and I always assumed I was an accident they had to live with because of their religious beliefs. But if I was adopted, that means they went out and acquired me on purpose, filling out multiple government forms in the process. That pretty much goes against everything I know about our relationship. Was my brother also adopted, and does he know? I suppose if he was, he would have also been told by now. But does he know that I was adopted? If so, did he always know? I have to doubt it. He never would have been able to keep that secret when we were younger.
This brings up the hardest question. Did my grandfather know? He almost had to. I can't see too many scenarios where your child adopts a child and you never know about it. If my grandfather knew, why did he never tell me? Maybe he was waiting until I was 18, but I think you should tell children long before then. He must have had his reasons, but what were they?
Most people are probably told about their adoption when they are still children. Or at least they should be. The most common issues adopted children likely face are feelings of rejection, not fitting in, and maybe being treated differently/not accepted by extended family. The people I always thought were my biological parents rejected me a long time ago, so learning that a previous set of parents rejected me even earlier is having no noticeable impact on my psyche. I survived, and was eventually relieved, when my parents disowned me. It turned out to be a great thing. Maybe losing the biological parents was also for the best. At this point, I have no information to make any kind of determination.
I never felt like I did not fit in, but that was more because of my grandparents than anyone else. They always treated me as if I was their granddaughter. There were never any issues in the neighborhood or at school from being adopted because no one seemed to know. Everyone probably assumed I was my parents' biological child. Anyone who may have known did an excellent job at keeping it secret.
I never had any issues with extended family because I never really knew most of my parents' relatives. I grew up with a brother, mother, father, and one set of grandparents. We were never a large family. My mother was an only child and her parents died before I was born. Her parents had siblings who lived in other parts of the country, so I rarely ever saw them or their families. My father had two sisters. They had a falling out over religious issues several decades ago. Things were rocky between my father and his parents for a while, but they patched all that up before I was old enough to know what was going on. My grandfather's family was mostly old and dead by the time I could get to know them. My grandmother's family came from old money “back east” and mostly had a problem with her marrying a jazz musician. Essentially, most of my extended family never had the opportunity to reject me because they had all rejected each other far sooner. The more you know about these people, the easier it is to understand how easily my parents disowned me. That family boat was rocking long before I started making waves.
How could I possibly be adopted when I have my birth certificate, which clearly lists my parents as the parents. Here is the funny part, and something I never knew about until I started down this rabbit hole: Once you are adopted, the state changes your birth certificate. The official government record that documents who you are and where you came from is falsified. And it is all completely legal. It has been standard operating procedure for over a century. Not only do they replace your birth certificate, they make it amazingly difficult to get a copy of the real thing. The best you can do is jump through a lot of hoops to maybe get pieces of information. Naturally, you have to pay the government for the privilege.
So what happens now? I was adopted in the United States, which never makes anything easier. Most countries have one set of laws. Realistically, one set for the rich and one set for the poor. In the United States, each individual state has its own laws. To get any information, I have to go through the state of Minnesota, rather than any federal database. In Minnesota, I can request any and all information about my original birth certificate. Within six months of that request, whichever government bureaucrat is assigned the case will “make every effort” to contact whoever is on the birth certificate.
This is where it gets tricky. The state has to respect the privacy of everyone who gave up a child for adoption. At the same time, they are usually the only way for anyone to find out who their biological parents are. They contact the parents or parent, if possible, and tell them the other shoe has finally dropped. Anyone who gives up a child has to know this is coming sooner or later. The parents then have 30 days to (1) tell the government to not disclose their information under any circumstances, (2) tell the government to go ahead and disclose whatever they want, whenever they want, or (3) ignore the state agency's request.
The biological parents also have the option to change their mind at any time, assuming no information has yet been disclosed. If they tell the state they want to remain private and the state tells me tough luck, the parents can fill out a new form days or decades later telling the state to go ahead and give me their information. At that point, the state has 31 days to inform me.
If the state fails to locate the biological parents within six months of my initial request for information, there are two options. (1) If either parent listed on the original birth certificate has ever filed, at any point in time, the correct form telling the government to never disclose their information, then the state cannot tell me anything. Unless the parent files a new form to revoke the first form, or a court orders the birth certificate unsealed. (2) If neither parent has ever filed the nondisclosure form, I can petition the court for the information, which the court can either (a) reject, (b) release partial information, or (c) release all of the information if the court decides it is in “the best interests of all known persons involved”.
If I am allowed to learn anything, by either court order or all the appropriate forms getting filed properly, the state has 31 days after the last parent was notified to give me any information. If, after being notified by the state, only one parent consents to releasing any information, then I would only be told about that one parent. I think that would be infinitely better than nothing. Even if I could only talk to one of them, odds are they would tell me more about the other than the government ever could.
If either parent is dead and filled out the form allowing me to have their information, the state has 31 days to give it to me. If they are dead and filled out the form forbidding me to have their information, I can petition the court, where a judge plays that “best interests of all known persons involved” game. My first thought was that, if dead, why not tell me who they were? How would it hurt them? But then I remembered that money and power are of the utmost importance in American courts. If my biological parents turn out to be Rockefellers, there are a few billion reasons to keep me in the dark. Those are not the type of people who enjoy sharing their inheritance.
Unfortunately, there is no government form that says I just want the information and have no intention of invading anyone else's territory. If, in the highly unlikely event that my biological parents were indeed rich and powerful, there would be no way for me to let anyone know that I do not want anything other than information. My point of view is that if you grew up in that family and you had to put up with all their bullshit, you have more right to their stuff than I do. In the far more likely scenario that my parents are anonymous everyday slobs, I still only want information. Family dynamics are a precarious thing. I have no desire to make even more waves. I am more than open to getting to know any potential relatives I might have, but I understand completely if they are less curious. Whoever these people are, I am not part of their family. I am simply the result of some man ejaculating into some woman. At the very least, I just want to know who owns the womb whence I sprang forth.
