[aldes]

here I am again with another problem. last I was here, we had discovered bio mom's stories (to dd) of happy life with new kids were all lies. They had been taken by DSS. We told her we needed a break. Not the end, but a break for awhile and let the po box close. (She was supposed to write 4 times a year; us 3 times to her). That was January.
Background..we lived with wife's folks for a few months waiting for tpr & then moved 2500 miles away 9 years ago. Suddenly, mil calls that a lady called her house looking for my wife about child custody situation & left a number. Wife calls the number. Lady not there. Lady calls mil again, leaves same #. Wife calls again,lady still not there.
Suddenly there's an influx of "Private caller" calls starting at 7 in the morning til 9 at night. We don't answer non-id calls ever. Tonight we are out trick or treating & come back to hear message from bio mom that she wants to talk about HER daughter. (came up as Private caller on rec'd calls list)


Where's the freaking privacy??!! Our name is on NOTHING! I don't even know how the in-laws' address got out! We only lived there 6 months 9 years ago. Obviously this lady (who left a name & phone number from which I obtained her address) is some kind of search angel, yes? She got our number from when my wife called her back, I assume.

So here's my questions: My daughter is 10. It isn't legal to search for her, is it? Or does she get around it by searching for US, the adults? Can I do anything about her doing such a thing?

You know what the dumb thing is? Bio mom was supposed to go to court if she felt she wanted enforcement. The contract says "ANY attempt to contact the adoptive parents directly voids this contract." I mean...story of her life...she has lost 3 kids doing things her way. Meanwhile we feel SO freaking violated that this loon knows...at the very least, our phone number...& because we felt certain she did not know our last name, we have always had a listed number so she likely now knows our last name & address too.

Just that she left that message without any regard for the fact that the child might hear it and be upset. I'm in a panic, right now. If she would go this far over a "break" for a few months (a letter & pictures were mailed just before the lady started calling that she probably hasnt picked up yet), who knows what else she would do or who else she could get to help her? I don't know what this lady did to get my information, but it can't be legal. Does anyone have any experience with this?

[stevenstwin]

OMG, that's awful!! I have no idea how they would obtain information such as your name, and if this is being done by a third party I can't see it being legal. Unfortunately, you don't seem to have much recourse since you don't really know exactly what happened. Did you even get the name of the searcher? (and in my understanding of adoption privacy laws, there is NO way that anyone is allowed to get around it by searching for the adoptive parents rather than the child herself!). Does your address appear with your number in the phone book? If not, then I'd say change your number immediately, and get your in-laws to do the same, and that should be the end of it. It's just getting too darn easy to find numbers and addresses these days, with the internet. Also - sounds like you have a legally binding contact agreement? If so, and she has violated, does that mean you can go to court to have it officially cancelled?

[brighteyes810]

It sounds as if she knew your names, maybe from a court document/record?. If she knew that, not only can you search the phonebook, but you can go to a free website I won't list here because I think it shouldn't be up. (If you want to know what it is, just PM me.) The website provides names, addresses and phone numbers obtained through public records, such as when you change your address with the U.S. Postal Service or buy property. She could have searched on your name and had your MIL's address and phone number come up with your name attached. (The website I'm thinking of actually says I lived at my MIL's house, which I never did. I think it does because my husband used to live there growing up, and it knows I've lived with my husband at various other locations over the years and must assume I lived there too. Programming bug if you ask me.)

Is this the firstmom that is calling and saying she's someone else? It it isn't really firstmom, it could be a friend of hers and not someone official. If it is someone who does this for a living, a professional, they should have guidelines and laws that they have to abide by. My guess is that this may really be a friend of the firstmom, and they obtained your names and looked you up. I'm guessing she searched for you and/or your wife, not your daughter as your daugher is likely too young to be listed in these public directories. As to the legalities, since all of this is free public information, I'm guessing it isn't illegal to look it up if it isn't a professional search. However, I'm not a lawyer.

I'm really sorry this has happened to your family. I've been there too and it really sucks. We just changed our phone number(s) and that seemed to work. (Although it was a pain in the neck to change it with all of our utility companies, friends, family, etc.) Also, our 10-year olds don't care to see their Mom. I think if she showed up on our front door step, so-to-speak, our kids would probably be ticked and tell her off and to go away. We are concerned, however, with her husband and friends and crap they may try to pull while high or not. Her husband and friends have a lot of criminal DV records and are known drug addicts. Thanks to the poor system, someone provided our kids firstmom with our last name along the way, and our kids would talk to her about us and call us by first names, so she already knew those.

[BrandyHagz]

To answer your question from a legal perspective, the answer is yes, it’s legal. There is no law that says someone can’t call your home and ask to speak with your daughter – there is no law that says that birth parents can not have contact with adoptees.

The law, as it reads in most all states, is that the state will not assist in the gathering of information or the search of the other side until the minor involved is of a certain age.

So the law is specific only with regards to the age the minor must be in order to seek out and get assistance from the state – it does not address, specifically, one or the other using other methods to search and/or contact the other party.

You can contact the police, but at this point, she hasn’t done anything but reach out and make a phone call – you’d likely not have any recourse at this point.

As for your information – in the information age with the use of the internet and whatnot, the sense of privacy is often just that, a sense – not a reality. It would take very little for someone to look for and find someone else’s information online – and depending on your state (and with the knowledge that laws often change) your information could be all over paperwork she has.

If you have some sort of court order that states direct contact voids the contact agreement, then it’s up to you to retain counsel and have that order enforced…but most likely, this entire situation is a family court issue and not a criminal court issue…she hasn’t broken any law – because there is no law in any state that I am aware of that prohibits unrelated adults from contacting children – and remember, according to the legal system, that is just what she is, an unrelated adult.

[aldes]

Brandy, yes, you make sense to some degree. Any body can call any other body unless that body is in foster care. I don't understand why confidentiality for foster kids goes away when they are adopted? I know our last name was on nothing. I know inlaw address was only used for DSS. We didn't even get a phone at that address because we knew it was short term. Every effort was made to keep us private.

But anyway the cat's out of the bag now so not any point in trying to prove she did it illegally. It would be nice if if it kind of came out on its own, tho'.

I guess we will buy stock in aspirin so we'll have it handy when we start getting stiff necks from watching over our shoulders.

[aldes]

Originally Posted by stevenstwin

OMG, that's awful!! I have no idea how they would obtain information such as your name, and if this is being done by a third party I can't see it being legal. Unfortunately, you don't seem to have much recourse since you don't really know exactly what happened. Did you even get the name of the searcher? (and in my understanding of adoption privacy laws, there is NO way that anyone is allowed to get around it by searching for the adoptive parents rather than the child herself!). Does your address appear with your number in the phone book? If not, then I'd say change your number immediately, and get your in-laws to do the same, and that should be the end of it. It's just getting too darn easy to find numbers and addresses these days, with the internet. Also - sounds like you have a legally binding contact agreement? If so, and she has violated, does that mean you can go to court to have it officially cancelled?

Yup, we had her name & phone so quick reverse got her address, which we will hand over to DSS Mon morning after we cancel landline altogether. In laws wouldn't change their number if Jack the Ripper was calling them. I don't really know how legally binding the contract is exactly. She had recourse to go back to family court and complain. But this is the kind of thing she has always done and the major reason she lost her kids...she just thinks she can do whatever she wants but YOU have to follow the rules. The wording in the contract is pretty cut & dried...you think it needs to go to court to be voided? Sounds like she voided it the minute she said hello. imo

[aldes]

Originally Posted by brighteyes810

It sounds as if she knew your names, maybe from a court document/record?. If she knew that, not only can you search the phonebook, but you can go to a free website I won't list here because I think it shouldn't be up. (If you want to know what it is, just PM me.) The website provides names, addresses and phone numbers obtained through public records, such as when you change your address with the U.S. Postal Service or buy property. She could have searched on your name and had your MIL's address and phone number come up with your name attached. (The website I'm thinking of actually says I lived at my MIL's house, which I never did. I think it does because my husband used to live there growing up, and it knows I've lived with my husband at various other locations over the years and must assume I lived there too. Programming bug if you ask me.)

Is this the firstmom that is calling and saying she's someone else? It it isn't really firstmom, it could be a friend of hers and not someone official. If it is someone who does this for a living, a professional, they should have guidelines and laws that they have to abide by. My guess is that this may really be a friend of the firstmom, and they obtained your names and looked you up. I'm guessing she searched for you and/or your wife, not your daughter as your daugher is likely too young to be listed in these public directories. As to the legalities, since all of this is free public information, I'm guessing it isn't illegal to look it up if it isn't a professional search. However, I'm not a lawyer.

I'm really sorry this has happened to your family. I've been there too and it really sucks. We just changed our phone number(s) and that seemed to work. (Although it was a pain in the neck to change it with all of our utility companies, friends, family, etc.) Also, our 10-year olds don't care to see their Mom. I think if she showed up on our front door step, so-to-speak, our kids would probably be ticked and tell her off and to go away. We are concerned, however, with her husband and friends and crap they may try to pull while high or not. Her husband and friends have a lot of criminal DV records and are known drug addicts. Thanks to the poor system, someone provided our kids firstmom with our last name along the way, and our kids would talk to her about us and call us by first names, so she already knew those.

Thanks for all the advice! We poured over every search we could find all night long and we could not find a single thing linking us to the inlaws address, which is where we know she started. We were not there long enough and never changed our address on anything because we knew it was short term. We are pretty convinced this lady has some insider info, but, what's the point of pursuing it? She will find out soon enough that she helped birthmom cancel out the little contact she did have and it may even dawn on her that she unleashed a crazy person onto a small emotionally fragile autistic person the state saw fit to protect. Maybe she is just a nice lady who was hornswoggled, who knows? But she didn't check out the facts and should have minded her own business. Maybe she could've have even actually TALKED to us & ASKED us our side before handing over the number (&who knows what else) to birthmom! oops...venting, sorry. But yeah, it sucks. She (searcher)never actually called us. She called mil to call here so we would call her back & she could ID the number...which of course is LISTED cuz we didn't think we had to hide! We really just thought it was mistaken identity, you know? But yeah, it was definitely birthmom who called here last night. We were going to cancel the landline anyway. Send aspirin.

[aedems]

Are you sure there was a different person calling your MIL and that it wasn't biomom herself pretending to be a "search angel"?? Are you able to reverse lookup the number you were given??

[aldes]

Originally Posted by aedems

Are you sure there was a different person calling your MIL and that it wasn't biomom herself pretending to be a "search angel"?? Are you able to reverse lookup the number you were given??

well, mil said it was a 'woman" who called them. When my wife called the number, she was also talking to a "woman" who said she was the sister. Name & phone number were given & match each other; listed so it was easy to find address. Might be that she does it on purpose so you feel comfy about calling..or maybe she just is some nice lady who thought she was helping. Also further searching found age at around mid 50's and a possible sister around same age.

Birthmom has never ever had a listed number. The number she left in the message was totally different and in the border state, but we don't know where she was actually calling from. reverse search just led us to ...Oh big surprise, an unlisted landline. And nobody would ever mistake 29 year old birthmom for mid 50 woman.

Thanks for the ideas tho'!

[athikers]

I would agree as a pp stated, though its not illegal for anyone to search for anyone else (she's searching not stalking) it certainly must be uncomfortable for your family.

[aldes]

due to fil's advanced age and busy hands, his computer had been offline all week. Mil's cell phone had died unbeknownst to anyone, so we didn't have any more info until yesterday.

So far, it came out that my wife remembered that the original person "to serve" listed in the contact agreement was not local enough for the judge. She didn't remember who she she replaced it with. When she told this to mil, mil says SHE remembers my wife saying that it was them. It is not written on our copy although the original name is sort of scribbled in the side margin. So perhaps biomoms copy has inlaws name and address scribbled on her copy.

Also, after the two initial calls, there was at least one more to fil where it was in fact biomom crying and screaming about how we took HER daughter and we can't shut her out. Fil says she said MY daughter about a 100 times (yep, that's her, all right). He says he told her he didn't want to be involved and hung up.

The agreement says this name and address are to be used AFTER FILING for an enforcement or modification hearing, So assuming biomom took the information that was supposed to be used only for serving court papers, used it herself and also gave it to someone else for non-intended purposes, does that change anything? After all, they are confidential court papers, not a phone book. Imo, it changes from searching, which is NOT kosher but not illegal to misuse of private information.

I feel a bit relieved that she probably doesn't have our name or address ...yet. The new thought is that she did the *##-thingy on the phone that tells you the last incoming number when my wife returned searcher/friend/relative/whoever she is' call.

I am not worried for myself but for my wife and mostly for dd. She has come so darned far to have it all fall apart when some crazy loon jumps out of the bushes screaming MY DAUGHTER!!

I don't mean to offend any birthmoms who might be reading this, ok? OURS is certifiable and nervy, & scary. Oh & last year we found out she failed a lot of drug tests while dss was taking her last kid. So now there is that to worry about as well as the home-grown crazy.