Just stopping by to wish everyone a safe and happy evening.

While I am here, I thought I would post a clip I found that amused me.  Desperate Housewives has joined the many TV shows discussing paternity.  It’s a little silly, and I hope you get a chuckle out of it like I did.

Happy New Year everyone.

A total of 10 families in the Tri-State area of Kentucky, Indiana and Illinois are in the process of adopting 18 Haitian children from the same orphanage.

It all started in 2005, when Michelle and Jeremy Cundiff decided that they wanted to add to their family of 5 through adoption. During their search for places to adopt from, they watched a TV show about adopting children from Haiti. They knew that Haiti was the right place for them to look for a child to bring into their home.

Through word of mouth and friends talking to friends, the adoption story grew to include 9 other families in the Tri-State area. Friends of friends began to be interested in adopting children from Haiti. This has led to a total of 18 children that are currently going the the adoption process from the same orphanage.

Sadly, Haiti is considered the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. Because of this poverty, each of the 18 children was brought to the orphanage by a biological parent who was unable to care for the child.

“It’s not that they don’t want the children or don’t love the children. It’s that they love them so much that they give them up,” Jeremy Cundiff said.

The Cundiffs had the opportunity to meet the birth mother of the two girls they adopted. The birth mother thanked them for adopting the children.

I have been working in client support for two years now.  In that time I have talked to A LOT of people about life changing paternity test results.  Sometimes we make a connection, the customer and I.  It may sound cheesy, but I know that during these difficult times people are looking for someone willing to hear their story.  I enjoy not only hearing the story but hearing the updates as their lives progress.

A few customers have stayed in touch over the years, and I know that the results of their Paternity Tests have definitely made an impact on their paths.  When I first started working in client support, I spoke with a woman who needed a paternity test on her son, who had passed away, and a child who was conceived shortly before his death.

She was very distraught and would call and email me several times a day.  She emailed me pictures of herself, her son, and the new child.  We discussed the things that would change in her life if this was in fact her grandchild.  Apparently, she didn’t feel the mother of the child was fit to care for the child.  Though she was nervous because she wasn’t sure at her age, 62, she could care for a newborn.

Finally, when her test results were ready she cried.  She wasn’t ready to hear them.  Either way she knew her life was changed forever. It was her son’s child.  For weeks I would hear from her about the court battles over custody and support.

Soon the emails started only coming in every few months.  She had won full custody of the child, and her life was dramatically different.  I still look forward to hearing from her.  The child is almost 18 months old now.

I am not sure I will ever fully understand the magnitude of paternity test results, but I do know I have enjoyed meeting people as they have traveled through what often times can be an exciting and difficult journey.

I found this touching video of a letter a birth mother wrote to the son that she gave up for adoption. I wanted to share it with the readers of my blog.  Enjoy.

Over the weekend the female Gorilla, Bawang of the San Francisco Zoo, showed us that adoption is not exclusive to the human race.

According to KCBS.com, shortly after giving birth, the mother gorilla, Monifa left the nest and did not attempt to care for her new born baby boy. The zookeepers tried several times to get Monifa to connect with the baby but were unsuccessful. Each time the new mother would move far away from the baby and eventually built a new nest.

Knowing that the baby needed a mother, the curators united the baby boy with an older mother named Bawang. Although the curators still have to feed the baby, Bawang has taken on the responsibility of mother and the unamed baby is doing well.

UPDATE:  If you would like to see more photos of the baby gorilla, the San Francisco zoo has posted more pics on Flickr.  CLICK HERE to see them.

While surfing through Youtube, I recently stumbled upon a series of videos in which Alex Gaylon documents his search for his birth mom.  Its an interesting experience to be able to tag along for the journey and see the various emotions that he experiences.  The journey is divded into two parts and culminates in the second video when the woman on the other end of the phone says “Hello”.

Part 1

Part 2

Over the weekend, the ABC show Brothers and Sisters aired an episode in which the two year old daughter of Tommy Walker needed a liver transplant.  In an earlier episode, when it was discovered Tommy was not able to father children, he asked his two brothers to donate so that Tommy and his wife could have a child.  With the liver transplant needing to come from the actual father, it was time to find out which of the two brothers was the biological father.

This brings up some questions that I am often asked.

-  How difficult is it to determine between two brothers, the paternity of a single child?
-  Does testing two brothers decrease the accuracy or probability of the test?

The truth is DNA testing is very accurate and unless the brothers are identical twins, the test will accurately reveal which one is the father.  The biological father’s profile must match the child at ALL locations (loci) tested (usually 15 markers).  It’s extremely unlikely that a brother would match a niece at all loci (unless he’s an identical twin to the brother, then their genetic profiles will be exactly the same as his brother and you cannot tell which one is the father).

In cases like this, we recommend testing both brothers (both alleged fathers) and including the biological mother.  By including the mothers DNA, we can identify which markers in the child’s DNA came from mom and focus on the DNA that must have come from dad.  If both brothers are tested with the biological mother, one will emerge as the biological father without question.

Any two people tested, even if unrelated, will likely share at least SOME markers in common (1, 2, 10), but a biological father and child will share ALL markers tested.  If only one brother is tested and the mother is NOT tested, there is a possibility (extremely small) that he could match the child at all locations.  This rare case could occur because he is genetically related as an uncle and because he randomly matches the child as any two people might.  This would make him appear as though he were the biological father.  Including the mother, testing additional markers/loci, and testing the other brother will identify more mismatches between the brother/uncle and child and show stronger matches between brother/father and child.

In early November, I read an article on a gentleman in Australia who won a difficult court case.  After winning he is now entitled to having $60,000 in child support payments re-paid by the biological mother who originally claimed he was the father of her child.  This was after many years of paying child support for two children a paternity test had already determined were not biologically his.

Just like the issue surrounding requiring paternity testing at birth.  This issue brings up many conflicts from all sides of the situation.  Again, we face three different set of people’s rights and whose is the most important.  We have the “father’s” rights, the mother’s rights, and the child’s rights.  When a solution is determined by looking at one groups rights others are always going to be impacted.

There are many people concerned about the child in these cases.  The money owed to the “father” in each case is apparently returned to him by garnishing the mother’s wages.  To many this could only impact the child negatively.   I imagine that many people have the same thought I do, “What if the mother really believed that he was the father?”

Men’s rights groups have the obvious response to these concerns, which is that these men are entitled to justice.  Does justice always have to be determined in a dollar amount?  Yes, a dollar amount is how this started and maybe that is why it is how it is the counter judgment is determined.  I don’t know.

Just like with the mandatory paternity testing I know there is no right answer here.  I don’t know if I feel that one side’s argument is more legitimate then another’s.  I realize more and more that the laws written in these cases seem to only be written from one group’s perspective.  I find myself concerned about this process of lawmaking.

Anyone have thoughts here?  Is there something I don’t see that makes this type of law more universal?