i am 16 years old and was adopted when i was 2. I found my birth-mother when i was 14 and have had contact ever since. i really want to go live with her but my parents wont let me…, i want to live with her because yes i am very grateful that they took care of me when she couldnt but i have been raised to be different than what and who want to be. they live in the country side and my birth-mom lives in a city not a big city but a city. what legal action can i take to go live with my birth-mother
What legal action can I take to go live with my birthmother?
– October 15, 2012Posted in: Community Wisdom
There are steps that you can take in order to live with your birth mom. Before going into those, I do have one question -
What is it that you are looking to accomplish by living with your birth mother?
Granted I really have many more questions than that, but that is the main one.
Legally, I do not know what your possibilities are right now. I would like to comment on some of the things that immediately pop into my mind reading your question.
1. You’re 16. Less than two years from now you can legally move wherever you want, be with whoever you want and invent the life you want for yourself. It’s really not that long of a time to wait (I know I sound like a complete old fart here.) You will have finished school and will not have to restart at a new school while you are negotiating learning a new relationship with your birth family.
2. By having contact with your birth mother you’ve already started on the path to building a relationship with her, learning about your roots and past. This time to build a relationship is important. Having distance during this time isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it allows you to reflect on issues and have space to process things in your own way and on your timeframe.
3. Many people, whether they were adopted or not, often do not share the values, preferences and choices of their family. As soon as I graduated High School I moved to the nearest large city and began what I felt was my “real” life.
4. Have you asked your family if you can go visit your birth mother? That would be a way to start testing the waters to see how this might work out in the long run.
Good luck and I hope my thoughts make sense to you.
Moving in with someone is a huge life decision. I know that you have known her for approximately two years now but is it possible to just spend weekends or a week every couple of months etc. with her rather than completely moving out of your current home? I would encourage you to explore the possibility of maintaining both your relationship with your birthmom and your adoptive parents. You haven’t given much information about your life with them but they have raised you for 14 years of your life and I imagine they would be devastated for you to move out under these circumstances.
Have you tried talking to your adoptive parents about your desire to spend more time with your birthmom? Rather than going the legal route (which I’m not sure there is one short of emancipation), I think the ideal approach would be to work out some kind of arrangement with both families. As adoptee’s we don’t have to choose between our families, the beauty of it is that we CAN have them both. It is just a process to figure out what that looks like and it is different for all of us. Best of luck to you, and congrats on finding your mom!
I am the mom of 5 adopted kids, all adopted from foster care so they had some knowledge of their birth parents. One of my daughters very much wanted permission to live with her “real” mom, and went to great lengths to do so. When all else failed to get her what she wanted, she hopped a plane, at 17, and flew across the country to be with her “real” mom. Let me just gently caution you, the grass is not always greener on the other side. Please use the 2 years you have with your parents to build a solid relationship if you want that, and when you are 18, do whatever you like. I know it is hard to be patient when you are 16, but I really feel that you will be glad you did wait until you were a legal adult.
To answer your question what can you do legally to live with your birthmother. Depending on what State you live in your birthmother can petition the court for change of custody. Now there has to be circumstanes like abuse or neglect in most States in order to file a petition but the fact that you are 16 there maybe just the option of the Judge asking where would you rather live with.
I wonder if you just have not bonded with your AP’s and being 16 you are naturally finding yourself trying to separate from them not because they are your adopted parents but because that is a natural process almost every teenager goes through. It is a part of life. The problem with the separation issue is that is can cause alot of conflict between you and your AP the same as it would be with your birthparents.
Your AP’s have raised you from the age of 2 and now you are 16. They have I am supposing loved you, sacrificed for you, nursed you through illnesses and instilled their morals in your upbringing and apart from being abusive or neglectful why would you choose to uproot your life now?
You mentioned being raised different than who or what you want to be and again that is normal. You maybe questioning their beliefs, their reasonings or rejecting their desire of a career choice for you.
As I see it you are very fortunate to have both your BM and your AP’s in your life. And I would suggest you sit down and talk to your AP’s and tell them how you are feeling. So far I see that you have been given some very good adivce from other people who commented. I hope you take the advice you have been given and wait the remainder two years with the parents who raised you. Once an adult you have the legal option of living where and with whom you want. I wish you the best.
I suppose you could attempt to get yourself imancipated if you had the money to hire a lawyer. That however would take some time and you’ll probably be 18 before it all gets sorted out, and at 18 you can legally make your own decisions. So why wouldn’t you wait until then?
Also, as the responders above questioned, why exactly are you wanting to do this? Are you abused? You may want to live with your birthmother, but does she want to live with you? Are your adoptive parents aware that you have this relationship with your birthmother or has that been hidden from them?
Your adoptive parents may have some different morals/values/points of view but that happens in biological families just as much as adopted ones. I was raised by my biological parents and I couldn’t be more different from them in morals/values/points of view. And not just my parents but siblings as well, actually! I’m like none of them. But you don’t have to agree on everything to love eachother and appreciate eachother in your lives. You say you were raised to be something that your not and go on to referece living in the country versus living in a city. Where you grow up does not dictate who you are!
So many people shy away from adoption and openness because they fear their adopted child will never accept them as parents. Is that how you feel? You say ‘yes i am very grateful that they took care of me when she couldnt but …’ But what? I very honestly would really like to know how you feel about your adopted parents. So seldom do we have the opportunity to hear from an adopted teenager. Do you not feel that they are your parents? Do you not feel a connection with them after a lifetime together as parent/child?