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Thursday, April 09, 2009
Ind. Decisions - "Ind. Supreme Court orders review of adoption: N.J. man has custody of twins, now 4, born in Indy via a surrogate"
In the Matter of the Adoption of Infants H.; Marion County Division of Indiana Dept. of Child Services, about which the ILB posted this entry yesterday, is the subject of a lengthy story today in the Indianapolis Star, reported by Vic Ryckaert and Jon Murray. Some quotes:
The Indiana Supreme Court on Wednesday overturned a lower court's ruling and ordered new hearings for a New Jersey man's controversial adoption of twins born to a surrogate mother in Indianapolis.Here is a list of some of the earlier ILB entries in this case.The Supreme Court ruled 5-0 that a Hamilton County court should not have granted the adoption without input from officials in New Jersey.
The ruling means child welfare authorities in New Jersey now must assess whether Stephen F. Melinger can provide a safe and stable home for the twins, Kathy Zee and Karen Zaria Melinger, who were born in April 2005 at Methodist Hospital.
Melinger, who is in his 60s, will retain custody of the now-4-year-old girls while the case goes back to Hamilton Superior Court. * * *
The twins were born as a result of a pregnancy brokered by Surrogate Mothers, a company run by Monrovia lawyer Steven C. Litz that solicits clients and surrogate mothers on the Internet.
Litz's company hired Zaria Nkoya Huffman, Laurel Bay, S.C., to give birth to the babies for Melinger. The company's Web site suggests Melinger would have paid at least $37,000 for the surrogacy. Sperm was used from a donor in California.
Melinger filed an adoption petition April 13, 2005. There were numerous court hearings and motions by the state during the next 18 months. The adoption was finalized in October 2006.
However, questions about Melinger's ability to care for the children arose while the twins were in Methodist Hospital. Nurses called child welfare officials after Melinger showed up to visit the premature girls with a live bird in the left sleeve of his suit jacket and, later, bird feces on his clothing.
In the ruling, the court said Litz repeatedly gave incorrect information to the court in the adoption proceedings. For example, the court said, Litz stated in an initial filing that Melinger lived in Indianapolis. In a later document, he said Melinger had lived in Union City, N.J., for 10 years.
Litz also allowed the surrogate mother to give an untrue statement when she claimed in an affidavit that she was inseminated with sperm from Melinger and a donor, according to the ruling.
Advertisement"The adoption judge's effort to deal with these successive shifting factual claims was understandably daunting," Chief Justice Randall Shepard wrote.
Litz did not return phone messages left at his office and on his cell phone Wednesday.
After the uproar over the Melinger case, the Indiana Senate passed a bill in 2007 that would have made it a crime to arrange surrogate births for profit, but a similar bill stalled in the House, and state law remains unchanged.
Adoption records are secret, so there is no data to show how many adoptions involve people from other states, but some lawmakers said they feared that Indiana was becoming a hub for out-of-state adoptions.
Posted by Marcia Oddi on April 9, 2009 07:39 AM
Posted to Ind. Sup.Ct. Decisions