Stahlke Adoption

Court Then

2005
Our footsteps echoed as we entered the large, empty courtroom. All five of the children, as well as Masha, Jonathan, and I waited a long time for the judge to enter. The multiple pairs of dice we had brought came in handy to entertain the children, who we needed to restrain from crawling over the furniture. They were clothed very nicely with dress shoes we had bought and fancy clothes provided by the orphanage.

The room contained a high tribunal for the judge and assorted small tables for other staff. On the left side of the tribunal stood a cage to hold criminal defendants. Some of the children seemed apprehensive upon seeing this device.

Our lawyer, the state social worker, and the orphanage director entered to tell us that the judge was coming soon. Suddenly the door opened and the judge rushed inside. He walked quickly to his place and immediately started talking in Ukrainian. Masha translated into English as fast as she could, but he spoke so quickly that she could hardly keep up. She did an amazing translation job, since he was speaking in Ukrainian, the official language, and she is a native Russian speaker.

The judge was concerned about our motives for adopting such a large number of children. I was very thankful that we live in a big city and not on a farm, for we could honestly say we wouldn't be requiring the children to do heavy manual labor.

The orphanage director, a wonderful lady, gave her opinion of our potential as parents. It was a beautiful speech. She said that initially she had misgivings of anyone taking such a large group of children. But after watching Jonathan and me interact with them for two weeks, she felt confident that we could parent them well.

Next, the judge required that each child come forward, one by one, to answer his questions. We started with our youngest, David, since he was very, very cute and extremely eager to be adopted. He had celebrated his sixth birthday only a week before our court date. Our young boy held tightly to the orphanage director's hand and approached the tribunal. Among other questions, the judge asked him if he wanted to be adopted. "Oh, yes!" After David, each child took a turn in front of the judge, and they all answered affirmatively.

The judge then consulted our paperwork and raised a big issue. In our original adoption request, made before we met our kids, we had asked for children ten years of old or younger. Now we were trying to adopt a group with one of the children older than that (Paul was 11). The judge expressed concern that the U.S. immigration service would not approve the adoption because of this age issue. We assured him that the request was our own, and not the U.S. government's. He told us, however, that we would need a letter from the embassy in Kyiv assuring him that the children would be allowed to enter the U.S.

We asked him for the court's fax number, but he told us that he needed the original letter and not a copy. Until we could produce such a letter, the adoption could not proceed. He strode quickly out of the room, and we told the children that there was another document needed before the adoption could be completed.

posted by Stahlkes @ 10:37 AM