GRAND RAPIDS, MI – A state Court of Appeals judge attacked the justice system over the adoption of a newborn whose presumed father, unaware of court proceedings, lost parental rights.
Judge Mark Boonstra said Peter Kruithoff, whose then-estranged wife surrendered the child under the state’s Safe Delivery of Newborns Law, had virtually no chance to challenge the termination of his parental rights or the boy’s adoption.
“Today, our system of justice should be hanging its head in shame,” Boonstra wrote in a dissenting opinion.
He said that Kruithoff wasn’t found to be an unfit parent and wasn’t given notice of proceedings to terminate his parental rights. He essentially lost his rights because he didn’t see a generic public notice about the boy’s birth, Boonstra wrote.
“But what of the responsibility of the child placing agency under the Safe Delivery of Newborns Law (SDNL), or more importantly, what of the responsibility of the state to provide constitutionally sound safeguards before commandeering parental rights (or, to use the majority’s hyperbolic lexicon, before ripping the child from his father’s arms) — without process, due or otherwise?”
Related: Michigan Supreme Court ruling: Boy can remain with adoptive fathers over his biological father
Kruithoff’s dissent is due to Kruithoff asking the U.S. Supreme Court for a hearing in the case. The case was based on a long-running legal battle which once offered Kruithoff custody. Kruithoff contends he wasn’t afforded due process.
The state Court of Appeals earlier determined that Kruithoff’s parental rights were wrongly terminated. The decision was later reversed by the state Supreme Court, which allowed the boy to live with his adoptive family who had cared for him nearly his entire life.
In a separate ruling last week, the Court of Appeals, in a 2-1 ruling, denied Kruithoff’s request to unseal the adoption records and have his parental rights reinstated.
Related: Supreme Court to hear case that could upend 3-year-old boy’s adoption
The majority – judges Ronayne Krause and Mark Cavanagh – said that “the ultimate determination of Doe’s custody would be determined on the basis of the child’s best interests.”
The child’s best interest and the parent’s interests are “not necessarily aligned,” the judges said.
“The child’s well-being and safety may demand that, after the passage of some time, it is no longer proper or permissible to rip the child out of what they regard as home to place them with a biological parent the child would regard as a stranger.”
Attorneys John Moritz and Michael Villar, representing Kruithoff with attorney Saraphoena Koffron, both told MLive/The Grand Rapids Press that the dissenting judge recognized the case as a “travesty.”
“The dissenting opinion is a searing indictment of the way the law has been written and interpreted,” Villar said.
Attorney Liisa Speaker, representing the adoptive couple, who are not identified in court records, said: “Obviously, I agree with the majority decision issued last week and I absolutely disagree with the dissent.”
Related: Couple fight to keep adopted son, 3, ‘ripped from only family’ he’s known
She claimed that the Court of Appeals addressed a narrow issue concerning remand from State Supreme Court in its most recent opinion. She asserts Kruithoff tried to open adoption records in order to pursue his lawsuit against Catholic Charities of West Michigan.
Kruithoff was presumed the father, as the baby was born during the marriage. Speaker stated that Kruithoff had admitted that he didn’t believe he was the biological dad and that his ex-wife claimed that he wasn’t.
Safe Delivery of Newborns Law or SDNL allows parents to legally and safely give up their child within three working days of the birth.
After the August 9, 2018 birth at the Spectrum Health Butterworth Hospital in Grand Rapids, the birth mother gave up the child.
An extraordinary, two-county legal battle began the day before the child’s birth when Kruithoff sought custody in a divorce petition in Ottawa County Circuit Court. The judge ordered DNA testing and prohibited the child’s permanent placement or adoption.
Kruithoff did not know about a separate Kalamazoo County Circuit Court legal action. There, a judge terminated both parents’ parental rights after Kruithoff did not respond to a legal notice in The Grand Rapids Press within a required 28-day period.
Three years later, the Court of Appeals said the notice was not sufficient to sever Kruithoff’s parental rights. The Supreme Court reversed that ruling and ruled that the filing of the divorce action didn’t satisfy SDNL requirements.
Now, Kruithoff’s attorneys have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review the case and the constitutionality of the safe-delivery law which is intended to discourage abandonment of newborns.
It provides anonymity and secrecy while eliminating the ability for the other parent, according to the filing.
“This case is the first in the nation to address whether the core feature of ‘safe haven’ laws – the empowerment of one parent to choose whether to deprive the other parents of their rights – is Constitutionally sound,” Koffron, one of Kruithoff’s attorneys, wrote.
“Everything comes down to the odious belief that women would rather murder their children than participate in an adoption process where the father might end up with the child.”
A few weeks prior to the birth, the birth mother said that she would adopt the boy. She contacted Bethany Christian Services but was told she needed her spouse’s consent to give up custody. She asked Kruithoff’s consent then said she had another way to anonymously give up the child, his attorneys wrote.
His attorneys said they became aware that Catholic Charities of West Michigan was involved in the child’s surrender and issued a subpoena in the divorce action for records of the birth. According to the agency, it claimed that it was unable to provide the information due the safe-delivery laws. An agency attorney stated that the adoption occurred in Kent County in the early part of 2019, not Kalamazoo County.
The agency is supposed to make “reasonable efforts” to find the non-surrendering parent.
Kruithoff received full custody of the Ottawa County divorce judgment, months after the adoption was completed. A month prior, he learned that the adoption and termination had already taken place in Kalamazoo County. The judge denied his claim that SDNL wasn’t constitutional.
“It is abjectly futile to require a clerk in the county where the custody petition is filed to find the other court,” his attorneys wrote.
“In addition to considering the futility of the SDNL’s procedure – and in addition to considering the burden that such a requirement places upon court staff and resources – it cannot be ignored that if the court staff fails to timely locate the court where the SDNL action is pending, then the SDNL court will have no awareness of whether the nonsurrendering parent has filed a petition or not.”
Speaker, an attorney representing the adoptive couple, requested that the U.S. Supreme Court deny the petition. Kruithoff didn’t act promptly and failed immediately to ask the divorce court for the safe-delivery court.
She said that the birth mother at the hospital would not disclose identifying information – or identify the father – when she surrendered the baby. In court records, she stated that both she and her baby had tested positive to methadone.
The birth mother told authorities “that the father ‘was very abusive,’” Speaker wrote.
Speaker said in court records that Kruithoff had pleaded guilty to “incidents of domestic violence against her” in Ottawa County, Las Vegas and Jacksonville, Florida.
After she moved in with her sister, he entered her home in Michigan and broke in to her home. According to a court filing, he assaulted her and broke her phone while she tried calling police. He also slashed her tires.
At the time, she was seven-months pregnant.
Kruithoff was represented by Villar. He said that the allegations were not part of his record and would not have been considered by appellate court. Kruithoff could have refuted any allegations if Catholic Charities had informed him about the adoption proceedings early.
“It has nothing to with issues on appeal,” he said.
Speaker said Catholic Charities, without information about either parent, published a notice in The Grand Rapids Press – in the county where the child was surrendered. Kruithoff knew that his ex-wife planned to adopt the child. According to the attorney, Kruithoff wasn’t certain that he was the biological Father because the couple had split around the time of the conception.
Speaker stated that four months after his parental rights had been severed, he was subpoenaed by Catholic Charities to obtain confidential adoption records.
The state Court of Appeals ruled three years after the termination – and 2 ½ years after the boy’s adoption – that Catholic Charities did not make reasonable efforts to find Kruithoff.
“The Michigan Legislature knew the purpose of allowing a safe surrender was to save the lives of newborns who would otherwise be at risk of unsafe abandonment or death. … Surrendering Parent was experiencing a crisis pregnancy due to extreme domestic abuse at the hands of Petitioner, her husband, also with her drug use,” Speaker wrote.
She said lawmakers decided that “saving the life of a newborn merited higher protection than the rights of nonsurrendering parents. This Court should not grant a petition whose goal is to strike down an entire statute designed to save the lives of newborns.”
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