Toddler in custody dispute can stay with Orange County woman -- for now

For now, Rancho Santa Margarita resident Stacey Doss does not have to return 2-year-old Vanessa to Ohio, where her birth father lives.

Doss began adoption proceedings months before Vanessa was born. But when Vanessa was less than a month old, her biological father, Benjamin Mills Jr., of Dayton, filed for custody, halting the adoption proceedings. Vanessa's birth mother, Andrea Conley, said that her pregnancy was the result of a one-night stand and that Mills was not the father. Genetic tests proved that he was.

In Ohio, a custody trial was scheduled after Doss failed to reach an agreement with the father in mediation.

More paperwork will be filed in the case with the California 4th District Court of Appeals, with the last brief to be due Dec. 24. From there, the court has 90 days to decide whether to stay a motion that allows Vanessa to reside in California with Doss until a full panel of the appellate court can make a ruling on which state has jurisdiction.

During the arguments Tuesday, judges questioned the ability of Ohio authorities to remove Vanessa from Doss' care.

"It's not about me, it's not about the birth father, it's about Vanessa," Doss said after the hearing while blinking back tears.

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Comments

[Aussie2020]

I hope the little girl does now need any biological material from the biological father, which the adopted Mum cannot provide and then ... The mother and the State of California will then be very very responsible. Sad that the State of California is now acting like Iran, which has also refused to return many children to their parents, mostly Mum's when one has taken them legally (at the time) to Iran. Sad that the some States in the USA do not respect the laws of other States. Return the child to his biological father if the adopted Mum refuses to follow the arbitration. Children have a right to know their genetic makeup and to be close to those who can provide biologically and genetically compatible material, e.g., bone marrow, ... The adopted Mum cannot provide this, and by denying her daughter access to her biological father and other siblings, cousins, grandparents, ... Is she really thinking of Vanessa as she says, or is she really thinking only of herself?

[brenda]

She has been with this mom since birth. If she needed marrow, she knows who the dad is...its hardly a reason to rip her from her mother and put her with a criminal thug who abandoned his other 4 kids!