Good Cause

"Good cause" is a very broad term.  In order to have my father's adoption record unsealed, we would have to show "good cause."  An example we were given is "you will face imminent death due to medical concerns if the file is not unsealed."  Well.....that wasn't exactly our issue.  We do have our share of health issues, as well as physical and intellectual disabilities in our family, but that was not the reason we wanted the file.  Obtaining that file would acknowledge that my father had an identity before the one his adoptive parents gave him.  Obtaining that file would acknowledge that his past was his and he had a right to it, ugliness, pain and all.  We knew it was a long shot that the file would contain anything we didn't already know, but we had to try.  We wrote a petition outlining the fact that while we understood the reasoning behind adoption law, it did not pertain to us.  We didn't need to be protected.  Both my grandparents are gone and all the siblings are in contact.  We vacation together for goodness sake.  The petition was short, but emotional and I prayed it would be effective.  My father submitted it to the courthouse and we waited.

After several weeks, my father walked into my center (I run a child care center in our local YMCA) with a piece of paper in his hand.  He looked tense.  From across the room, I said "they denied it, didn't they?"  Very slowly and deliberately, my father shook his head no.  My father was holding a court order to unseal his adoption file!  A copy of the petition quickly went in the mail to Des Moines, where the main file was held.  Which left us waiting again.  This time, however, we were waiting with excitement, not with fear of being denied like we did after submitting the petition.  A few short weeks later, the file arrived.  Dad and I read every document.  It was mainly filled with phsychological exam reports, interviews with my father's adoptive parents and a few statements about his birth parents.  There was not much to say about his father - born in Indiana, tall and angular, died.  The statements about his birth mother were rather unpleasant and weren't anything we didn't already know, and so I leave them out.  We had hoped for something we could use in our search, but had not really expected to find anything.  That was ok.  The file belonged to my father.  He had a right to it and now it was in his hands.  Except.....there was one statement we did not expect to read.  Canadian Army - World War I - Discharged 7/26/1919.  We knew my grandfather lived in Canada at some point, but the army?  And there was a discharge date.  Now we had something to work with!