Contacting adopted children. Leave it alone?

tea_lover

I'm sorry but it was perfectly possible. Your husband made the decision to not be involved. Now that may well be a decision he regrets but it would be pretty selfish to change his mind now.

swingaloo

balletshoes wrote: »

I agree with that, but its up to her mum and Dad to tell her, its not up to the OP or her OH to do so.

I agree to a point, but we dont know if her mum has told her anything or not. My hubby is not on Facebook (he hates it) so even if she has told her about him she will have no idea how to find him or where he is as there has ever been any contact since the divorce.

It may be that she is in blissful ignorance or alternatively it maybe that like I was, she is hoping he may get in touch.

balletshoes

swingaloo wrote: »

I agree to a point, but we dont know if her mum has told her anything or not. My hubby is not on Facebook (he hates it) so even if she has told her about him she will have no idea how to find him or where he is as there has ever been any contact since the divorce.

It may be that she is in blissful ignorance or alternatively it maybe that like I was, she is hoping he may get in touch.

which is why, at the most, your OH contacts his ex-wife to ask, nicely, if his birth daughter is aware of his existence. If she does know, and wants to make contact with her birth father, her mum will be able to pass on his details - if she asks.

swingaloo

tea_lover wrote: »

I'm sorry but it was perfectly possible. Your husband made the decision to not be involved. Now that may well be a decision he regrets but it would be pretty selfish to change his mind now.

Thats not so. Its not a change of mind, its how he has always felt.

At the time, the man she had met said he wanted to marry her and bring up the child without any intervention from my husband. He made it clear that if my husband did not agree then he would not be marrying her or taking on the child. What my husband did he did for the sake of the child and his ex, not for selfish reasons.
He did what he thought was right for them and has always regretted it but as his ex wife made it clear that there would be no future for them if he did not agree e felt he was putting his daughters life first.

theoretica

Aren't there charities which specialise in this sort of thing and may have better experience to back up their advice? http://www.adoptionsearchreunion.org.uk/contact/intermediaries/questionsanswersrelatives.htm

missbiggles1

PasturesNew wrote: »

Have you got a copy of her birth certificate? (£10 or so) just to check what father's name they put on there....?

I think she has a right to know that she has a "real father" and who that is, but it's something that needs to be managed properly.

So, my first step would be to get her birth certificate to see what the ex-wife put under "father" in the box on the form.

You probably need some professional help to make the contact. An intermediary .... rather than doing anything direct and/or via Facebook.

Imagine if you got drunk one night and just posted "IMMA UR DADDI!!"

She has a "real father" - the man who's brought her up!

Oops - already said.

missbiggles1

heuchera wrote: »

I think PasturesNew's idea of getting a copy of the birth certificate is a good one. Presumably the daughter has seen her own birth certificate, so if your OH is down as the father she obviously knows already. But if (as I fear) they've lied and put her new husband down as the father then the brown stuff is going to hit the fan when she finds out she's been lied to all these years.

She is an adult now, and she deserves to know the truth, if she doesn't already.

I'm pretty sure that, if they were married at the time, it wasn't a lie to put her husband's name down as the father.

tea_lover

swingaloo wrote: »

Thats not so. Its not a change of mind, its how he has always felt.

At the time, the man she had met said he wanted to marry her and bring up the child without any intervention from my husband. He made it clear that if my husband did not agree then he would not be marrying her or taking on the child. What my husband did he did for the sake of the child and his ex, not for selfish reasons.
He did what he thought was right for them and has always regretted it but as his ex wife made it clear that there would be no future for them if he did not agree e felt he was putting his daughters life first.

I'm sure that makes sense to your husband but I can't get my head round it (not that you need me to of course, I'm an internet stranger and you can totally ignore me). It comes across as a total newcomer somehow managed to call the shots and your husband went along with it, I don't see how he could possibly know that this was in the baby's best interests. Regardless...he made that decision and it would be unfair to go back on it now.

LilElvis

swingaloo wrote: »

I agree to a point, but we dont know if her mum has told her anything or not. My hubby is not on Facebook (he hates it) so even if she has told her about him she will have no idea how to find him or where he is as there has ever been any contact since the divorce.

It may be that she is in blissful ignorance or alternatively it maybe that like I was, she is hoping he may get in touch.

There is a third scenario which you don't seem to have entertained, that she knows she has a genetic father but has no interest in having a relationship with him. It might fly in the face of your own experience, but it isn't an uncommon one.

gettingtheresometime

I think your own feelings are clouding your judgement.

You would want to know but you don't know if this woman wants to know....just in the same way that some people want to have all the medical treatment that's going for a condition and others don''t.

The only advantage I can think of her of 'knowing' about anything about your husband is if there is a medical condition she should know about.