Mothers must tell their children the birth father's name, even if the child was adopted. They owe each other support and consideration, according to the judges.

An adopted child has the right to obtain information about the father's identity from the birth mother. The fact that the woman is no longer the legal mother of the child does not preclude the right to information. This was decided by the Federal Court of Justice (BGH) in Karlsruhe (Az. XII ZB 183/21). The judges ruled that parents and children owe each other support and consideration. The right to information has "very significant constitutional importance".

The case is about a 30-year-old woman who was adopted as a little girl. The biological mother had stated that she could not remember any possible father. She was only 16 years old when her child was born, as the BGH explained. After the adoption, the two did not see each other again until 2003, mediated by the youth welfare office . The daughter sued the court for information about the biological father - initially unsuccessfully before the district court in Stuttgart. The Stuttgart Higher Regional Court then ordered the mother to name all the men with whom she had sexual intercourse at the time in question.

On the other hand, she lodged an appeal with the Federal Court of Justice, which has now rejected it. The state is also obliged to protect individuals from withholding available information about their origins. The BGH explained that this is not just about enforcing financial interests. Rather, the right to know one's own descent is strengthened.

It does not matter that the daughter has adoptive parents . The obligation to provide information had already arisen before the adoption. The mother also did not claim that her privacy could be violated.

PORTLAND, Ore.—A Hillsboro, Oregon woman was sentenced to federal prison today for engaging in a multi-year scheme to defraud her employer, a non-profit adoption and surrogacy agency operating in Oregon and Washington, and her extended family.

Melodie Ann Eckland, 56, was sentenced to 54 months in federal prison and three years’ supervised release. She was also ordered to pay more than $1.6 million in restitution.

“Melodie Eckland used her position of trust within a local adoption agency to steal funds intended to help children across the world find loving families. She further stole thousands of dollars from a deceased family member’s estate in a failed attempt to keep her employer from discovering her scheme. Eckland’s selfishness and greed caused great loss and hardship for many people and pushed her employer agency to the brink of insolvency,” said Scott Erik Asphaug, U.S. Attorney for the District of Oregon.

“Preying on the trust of her employers, her friends, and her family, Ms. Eckland stole from those who trusted her most. In doing so, Ms. Eckland irreparably hurt local families attempting to do just that – become families,” said Special Agent in Charge Bret Kressin, IRS Criminal Investigation (IRS:CI), Seattle Field Office. “Financial and tax crimes are not victimless, and today’s sentence is justice served for Ms. Eckland’s wanton disregard and theft from those around her.”

According to court documents, from at least 2011 and continuing until April 2018, Eckland was employed as a bookkeeper for a local adoption and surrogacy agency. Her duties included maintaining agency books and records, managing payroll, filing employment tax returns, and paying quarterly employment taxes to the IRS. Eckland also provided financial statements to the agency’s board of directors, but did not have signature authority over the organization’s business bank account.

The National Assembly adopted at second reading -pardon the pun-, a law that puts associations on their feet. Firstly because they consider that, under the guise of “modernization”, this law undermines the consent to adoption

of birth parents.

A complex subject

Nothing less. Watching the broadcast of the debates is interesting. We are rediscovering how important laws can be passed by a tiny number of deputies. The polite, yet lively exchanges shed light on a complex subject. To summarize in broad strokes, until now, parents, often a single mother in difficulty, entrusted the ASE with their child, thus giving them access to the status of ward of the State.

In a second step, in another step, this same birth parent gave his consent for this child to be adopted. From now on, the two stages will become one: placement under State guardianship will be accompanied, in the same movement, by the possible opening towards simple or full adoption.

The XII. The civil senate of the Federal Court of Justice has ruled that a biological mother is fundamentally obliged to provide her child with information about the identity of the biological father even after adoption.

The underlying case concerned an applicant born in 1984 who requested information about the person of the biological father from her biological mother, the respondent. At the time of her birth, the respondent, who had grown up in problematic family circumstances, had just turned 16. She only noticed the pregnancy in the seventh month and left the secondary school, where she was in the seventh grade at the time, without a diploma. After the birth, she first lived with the applicant in a mother-child home and later in a shared flat for girls before the applicant was adopted by a married couple. A paternity determination procedure carried out in 1985 was just as unsuccessful as an extrajudicial paternity test with another man. At the end of 2003, mediated by the youth welfare office, the applicant and opponent met. After the applicant had unsuccessfully asked the respondent in March 2018 to name and address the biological father, she has now requested this information in the court proceedings. The district court rejected the application because the respondent was unable to provide information. In response to the applicant's appeal, the Higher Regional Court amended this decision and, in accordance with the application, obliged the respondent to give the applicant the full name and address of all the men who were with the respondent during the legal period of conception.

The Federal Court of Justice rejected the appeal on points of law lodged by the respondent.

The basis for the claim for the requested information is the provision of § 1618 a BGB, according to which parents and children owe each other assistance and consideration. Even if the regulation does not provide for any specific sanctions in the event of a violation, parents and children can mutually develop legal claims from it. The general right of personality entails the constitutional obligation of the state to take appropriate account of the individual's need for protection before the withholding of available information about one's own origins when structuring the legal relationships between the persons concerned. This must be taken into account when interpreting § 1618 a BGB*, especially since the legislature has not expressly standardized a right to information. Unlike the claim of the so-called dummy father against the child's mother for information about the identity of the biological father of the child, for which the Federal Constitutional Court rejected a derivation from the principles of good faith (§ 242 BGB**) and demanded an express legal basis , it is not just a matter of asserting financial interests. Rather, the right to information strengthens a legal position of very considerable constitutional importance, namely the right to know one's own descent.

The fact that the respondent is no longer the legal mother of the applicant due to the adoption of the applicant and the expiration of the legal parent-child relationship resulting from Section 1755 (1) sentence 1 BGB due to adoption does not conflict with the claim. Because the obligation to provide information between the child and the mother arose before the adoption. If one were to see this differently, adoption would, with regard to the right to know one's parentage, lead to an unjustified disadvantage compared to children whose legal parent-child relationship with their biological mother continues. In the present case, the Respondent has not presented any significant considerations that speak against her obligation to provide information, but on the contrary at no time denied that the claimant's right to information exists in principle. Thus, she did not invoke specific concerns that could lead to denying the existence of the right to information with regard to her right to respect for her private and intimate sphere, which is also protected under constitutional law.

The teenager, now aged 17, was sold at birth via a middleman to adoptive parents who died when he was 4, leaving him orphaned

After an online search he traced his birth parents, but shortly after meeting them they told him to cease contact as they had new families

A young man in China who was sold by his parents at birth tracked them down last month, only to be abandoned by them again.

Liu Xuezhou, a 17-year-old college student in Hebei province, northern China, reunited with his birth parents a few weeks ago after he launched an online search, but was told they did not wish to maintain contact shortly after their reunion, the teenager said on social media.

Liu was sold by his birth parents in 2005 to his adoptive parents via a middleman and was subsequently orphaned at age four when his new parents were killed in an accident. He said neither his birth father nor mother would accept him as they had divorced after selling him and each had a new family.

What might become of pregnant people in states with little-to-no access to abortion and religious ties in many of their adoption agencies?

“I don’t think I had any real option. When you go into these homes you’re not going in with any options.”

My grandmother’s voice is shaky on the phone. It is the first time I’m asking her about how she relinquished her parental rights to her son, Joseph, in the early 1960s at a “home for unwed mothers.” She was not showing signs of her pregnancy until her last month, she tells me, which is another way of saying that she wasn’t ushered into the home earlier to be kept hidden.

“It was shortly after the child was born that you were in there signing papers. Within hours,” she says. “The biggest emotion was getting to hold him, and then after having to sign the paperwork, it was depression.” She describes stories she remembered of people getting an abortion and dying, of unsafe and unregulated pills, conditions, or practices. When I ask her if she would’ve gotten an abortion if they had been available and safer back then, she says, “Absolutely.”

Adoption rates have declined since the Baby Scoop Era, a period that began in the mid-1940s and concluded with the Roe v. Wade ruling issued 49 years ago this week. A time plagued by stigmas around single parenthood and premarital sex, and little-to-no access to contraception and abortion, the Baby Scoop Era ushered many birth-givers into wedlock, shame, fear, and danger. Many were sent to convents or homes for unwed mothers, where they were kept until they gave birth, an event that ultimately ended with a coerced or forced adoption.

Gurgaon: A day after cops arrested two more members of the child trafficking gang, investigators said on Monday that it bought newborns from couples from humble backgrounds and sold the infants to a community of street performers in Rajasthan for Rs 1.5 lakh (girls) to Rs 4 lakh (boys).

The community members, police said, would train the children from an early age for street performances like walking on the rope. The girls, after a certain age, were sold to people as brides. This was revealed by the gang leader after his arrest by the police.

On Sunday, cops nabbed Kulwant Singh from Delhi and Anil from Alwar in Rajasthan, bringing the total number of arrests to 11. Kulwant, the investigators said, was the mastermind of the gang while Anil was responsible for arranging possible clients for the infants.

To date, police have recovered three infants, two girls barely a month-old and a four-month-old boy. “We are trying to find out details of children sold,” said ACP (crime) Preet Pal Sangwan. “The gang members, during interrogation, told us they used to sell the infants to a community of street performers in Rajasthan.”

Cops said many more members of the gang are still at large. The accused, during interrogation, told cops that they had no knowledge of the current locations of the children sold by them.

In Flanders, 46 children were adopted last year, 27 of which were through so-called intercountry adoption. This is apparent from figures that Belga has requested from Kind en Gezin.

While nearly 30 children were adopted through domestic adoption in 2017, that number has fallen below 20 in recent years. Last year, nineteen children, including twins, were placed with eighteen adopters.

In 2021, 27 children were also placed with a family in Flanders through the mediation of an intercountry adoption service. It concerns children from nine countries of origin: the Philippines, Thailand, Chile, South Africa, Hungary, Portugal, Togo, Burkina Faso and Morocco.

The number of foreign adoptions has also been affected by the corona pandemic in recent years. For example, no air traffic was possible with a number of countries of origin and the adoption could not always be legally confirmed, because some foreign courts were closed, so that the actual adoption had to be postponed.

Future screening

Chennai: The Tamil Nadu Police are on high alert after a number of child trafficking cases have been reported. The police had arrested four members, including the mother of a 10-month-old baby, when they were trying to sell it to a couple in Andhra Pradesh for a huge sum.

Police arrested an agent Thanakam on Friday based on the information provided by the four people who were arrested.

Thankam has four cases of child trafficking against her and is a habitual offender and has national-level networks, according to police.

While there are several processes of adoption in the state with approved legal procedures, the sidestepping of these laws and making children available through the illegal route is getting rampant in the state.

A senior police officer with the Tamil Nadu Police while speaking to IANS said, “The child traffickers are getting the support from some ambulance drivers, testing laboratories and even government hospitals on women who are aborting their pregnancy due to social reasons and in some cases due to physical issues. These women are convinced by the child trafficking network to give birth to the child and the child is then bought for a paltry sum and sold at a higher price. We are in the process of cracking this racket and have got valuable tips. However, we cannot provide more information now.”

Ranchi: Police have identified the woman who sold a baby boy for Rs 22,000 to one Nikhat Parveen and are going to record her statement, sources said on Saturday.

Parveen, who is a resident of Mumbai, was detained at Birsa Munda International Airport on Thursday while she was trying to board an Indigo flight with the baby, whom she had bought in Sonahatu area of Ranchi.

A case was registered against her under Juvenile Justice act at the anti-human trafficking unit and she was forwarded to jail on Friday.

Kotwali officer-in-charge Shaliendra Prasad said, “Both the buyer and seller of the infant committed a crime. However, the statement of woman who sold the child has to be recorded before taking further action. Preliminary information suggests that she is from a poor family.”

Meanwhile, Sanjay Mishra who has worked with the government to rescue a number of children from trafficking, said, “Ever since the Central Adoption Resource Authority was formed, elaborate measures are to be followed before a child is adopted. Due to the intricate procedures, there is a long list of people waiting for adopting a child. The applicants are made to wait even for several years. Under such circumstances, some people using money to adopt a child.”