This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2011, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Two years after a Utah couple adopted his daughter, a Virginia man has filed a federal lawsuit alleging he was fraudulently shut out of his child's life.
John M. Wyatt's lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Virginia claims a Utah adoption agency, its attorney, the adoptive parents and their attorney used "improper, unethical and fraudulent means and methods" to deprive him of his parental rights and kidnap Baby Emma after her birth.
Wyatt asks the court to return his daughter and grant more than $22 million in collective damages to himself, his mother, Jeri Wyatt, and Baby Emma. The complaint names A Act of Love Adoption Services, social worker Laraine Moon, adoption attorney Larry S. Jenkins, Thomas I. and Chandra Zarembinski, and attorney Mark T. McDermott, of Maryland.
Wyatt alleges a vast conspiracy exists in Utah to take children away from unmarried biological fathers and place them with married couples via restrictive adoption laws, including a requirement that a putative father file with the state's registry no later than 24 hours after a child's birth. But biological fathers may be purposely misled or unaware of a birth mother's intentions, as Wyatt says he was. In addition, the state's putative father's registry is "purposefully virtually impossible to locate," the complaint says.
Wyatt claims the scheme against fathers violates fathers' due process rights and is promoted by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Utah Legislature, state agencies and the courts. "In essence, the state of Utah does not have a realistic separation of church and state," the complaint states.
Wyatt's federal lawsuit is believed to be the first to raise constitutional questions about Utah's adoption laws, which at least half a dozen biological, unmarried fathers have unsuccessfully fought in state court. The lawsuit also seeks clarity on what happens when courts in different states make conflicting rulings regarding paternity and custody rights.
Wyatt said that he has always been "ready, willing and able" to care for Emma and consistently made that desire known to Colleen Fahland, Emma's mother, from the time she announced her pregnancy to the days before she gave birth. Virginia law requires a birth mother to identify a biological father and notify him of a pending adoption. Fahland did neither of those things, Wyatt claims, and relinquished parental rights a day after giving birth, which violated a Virginia law requiring a three-day waiting period.
After the birth, Fahland and newborn were lodged at a hotel under an alias. After learning Fahland had given birth, Wyatt was told he could see his daughter only if he signed an adoption release. He refused, and on Feb. 18 filed for custody of his daughter in Virginia. Three months later, a judge granted him temporary custody of Baby Emma and made the order final in December 2009.
Meanwhile, the Zarembinskis began adoption proceedings in Utah. That judge found Wyatt failed to comply with Utah's adoption law and had no right to intervene in the proceeding. Wyatt appealed the adoption to the Utah Supreme Court, which heard arguments in the case last September but has yet to issue an opinion.
The defendants say they were improperly sued and that Utah, not Virginia, is the appropriate jurisdiction for such a challenge. They have asked the federal court to dismiss Wyatt's complaint, which is described as a "scintillating tale of nefarious characters engaged in baby selling and conspiracy theories involving the state of Utah and the Mormon Church."
The defendants argue Wyatt was on notice he needed to assert his parental rights in Utah during a phone conversation, when Fahland mentioned a "possible adoption" and in a text message she sent Wyatt before Baby Emma's birth. The text message read: "Do you understand that Im receiving information from a Utah agency for proceding [sic] with an adoption."
In previous rulings, the Utah Supreme Court has found a mother gave adequate notice to one biological father of her intentions simply by stating, "I'm in Utah," the defendants note.
Fahland freely decided that adoption was the best option for her child and, with that decision made, the adoption properly followed laws in Utah and Virginia, the defendants say.
In an affidavit filed by the defense as part of the federal lawsuit, Fahland said she was "pretty sure" she told Wyatt she had decided adoption was the best choice for their baby. Although Wyatt expressed interest in raising the baby with her, he was unemployed at the time and never "showed me a crib or a car seat or anything else for a baby," Fahland said.
"I had difficulty taking John Wyatt seriously about helping to parent until after I had placed the child for adoption," Fahland states in her affidavit. "After that I gradually began to regret my adoption decision and came to wish that John Wyatt and I were sharing responsibilities for raising the child."