This story would be so much easier to write if Lauren and I were not the protagonists. The plot changes are more dramatic than you would want for a real life adventure, but we are torn when we describe them between our desire to document this trip and the feeling that we are somehow boasting about the circumstances for literary effect.
I can assure you that we are not!
Today was another roller coaster. First the court hearing at which we were not only awarded the children, but also given the benefit of an “immediate execution” order, negating the usual 10 day waiting period following judgment! At the end of the hearing, the kids were legally ours!
Then the visit to the Civil Acts Registration Office to get new birth certificates, needed in order to get possession of the children and to apply for their passports. Here, the clerk informed us that the judge had no right to issue an immediate execution order and that we would need to wait 10 days to get the birth certificate.
So it was judge versus clerk and guess who won? That’s right, at the end of the day we don’t know whether we are in fact legally the children’s parents yet. (Lauren’s interjection here: As of now, bureaucrat or no bureaucrat – clerk is too bland a term – we are legally the parents of Anastacia Irina Gold and Alexander Isaac Gold, even if we can’t get their new birth certificates.)
And like any good cliffhanger, there’s a thread of hope left to us in the morning. To be continued. Yet again… Lauren and I are, to say the least, exhausted.
The details. We woke at 6 so that we could be in Radomischle by 8 and round up the relatives (Grandfather and aunt on their mother’s side, and Nastia’s grandmother on her father’s side). We wore our good suits, although my leather shoes were very tight over the double layer of socks I’ve been wearing each day, and when we arrived in Rado, Lauren and I waited in the little store around the corner from the hotel so that we wouldn’t have to confront the relatives before court.
At quarter to 9, Vanya, our driver, picked us up. They had succeeded in collecting all the relatives (a very good sign for us) and everyone was waiting at the court house, a good description, as the building really looks like it may have been a house some hundred years ago or more.
We arrived to find Victor, the other driver, and the grandfather, Grigory Antonovich Solamacha, standing on the steps smoking. He greeted me with a big happy handshake, which was fantastic, because we knew that we wouldn’t have problems with him. We all stood around for 15 minutes or so while Svieta had a pretrial conference with the judge. The other relatives were just as warm as Grigory. A huge relief. (Lauren: A big unknown was Nastia’s grandmother, who was even hostile at the first contact with our translator and only acquiesced to sign off on the kids after her son, Nastia’s father whose rights were terminated, convinced her it would be best. She turned out to be sweet and very emotional and we shared some tears and hugs and promised to be in touch.)
Svieta appeared with a document neatly written out in Ukrainian, which I was to write in her English translation for Lauren and I to sign. The document was basically a petition to the judge to allow an immediate execution of a court decision (negating the standard 10 day wait for execution) on the basis of hardship for us and the children. This was a great sign.
A clerk took down everyone’s names, and then we all went into the courtroom. It looked like most any small town courtroom might look, with docks for defense and prosecution, a witness stand, pews for an audience. There were three judges chairs on a raised platform behind a nice table, and a security cage for what we presumed would be the restraint of violent defendants.
There were no lights, no heat, and in fact from what we could tell, no electrical systems of any kind in the room. Consequently, it was probably about 30 degrees inside, and everyone, including the judges, wore overcoats. By this time, my feet had lost all circulation due to the tight shoes and the cold floor. They felt like blocks of ice. I kept my coat off for the first half hour, out of what seemed like proper decorum, but gave up. Lauren had a nice wool suit coat and bore the temperature more admirably. (Lauren: They – the judges – actually gasped when I took my jacket off, telling me to keep it on – everyone but the judge who was in robes had their winter coats and scarves on – but I wasn’t having it. I hadn’t spent 3 hours in Syms in Miami looking for a wool suit for court for nothing.)
The head judge and his two assistants ran an orderly hearing. It lasted about an hour. He introduced all the parties and asked questions of everyone concerned. Lauren and I talked about our reasons for adopting here, our plans for the children’s education, how we wanted to preserve their Ukrainian heritage, etc. We showed a short slide show on my laptop of the best photos we have of all of us together.
Then he questioned Oksanna, the regional administrator for the welfare of orphans, who said good things. Also Tatiana, the director of the Vischevitsche orphanage and then Tatiana, the lawyer from the Radomischle orphanage. Everyone said nice things about us and our relationship with the kids, and how the kids have done well since we entered their lives, etc.
Then he called in the relatives, one by one, starting with Nastia’s grandmother Ludmilla Yevdokiymovna Rudnitska. He asked about her relationship to the children, whether they had any other close relatives, whether she knew who we were and what the case was about, etc. She identified us as her future relatives! The judge also asked us if we had any questions for her, and since he wasn’t asking if she objected to the adoption (!), I did, and she said no, this was best for the kids!
Then Grigory. He took the witness stand and when the judge asked him about his profession, he began an argument with the judge. Svieta said he was having problems with his pension and wanted the judge to intervene on his behalf! What a scene. Finally he said he would stick to this case, but he’d be coming back to see the judge after the new year.
He too identified us as future relatives and he too answered my question by saying he did not object.
Finally the aunt, Olga Gritzok, a 19 year old student in some medical field. She identified us as future close relatives. The judge said that he would save me the trouble by asking if she had any objections to the adoption and she too said no.
He then called a recess so they could render a decision. I took advantage of the break to change my shoes and visit the outhouse in the alley behind the building. Then more conversation with the family.
Finally the judge appeared, all stood, and he read the judgment in our favor. It was very detailed. It covered the background of the children, their health situations, our background and ability to care for them, the recommendations of the various parties, etc. He ruled that we should become their parents and that their names should be changed as we had requested, dropping the patronymics and making their middle names Irina (after Lauren’s grandmother) and Isaac (after Michael’s grandfather).
Further, he ruled as noted above, for immediate execution! There were hugs and smiles and promises of photographs to be sent. The lawyer from Radomischle school, the one which had till now been our problem, said we could collect Sasha tomorrow. Vischevitsche would of course be no problem. It was amazing. Lauren and I were parents.
We already had a list of the things we needed to do to get the kids home. We would need new birth certificates and passports, but the list of things needed to execute these two items had a lot of stamps and notarized copies and other bureaucratic stuff on it. So we decided not to visit the kids today but instead to get cracking. With any luck we could be in Kiev for the new years weekend and leave the country by mid next week!
Our first stop was the office for birth certificates. We produced their old birth certificates, notarized copies of our passports, official requests for the birth certificates, the court order, etc. The clerk pulled the birth records and was about to make out our new forms when she scratched her head and thought for a minute. Then she disappeared into the back room to search for some document. She returned 5 minutes later with a file containing a letter from some official in the ministry of justice, dated March 2006, stating that judges did not have the authority to issue immediate execution orders! Sorry, but she could not complete the forms for us…
We protested and called the judge, who we could hear was yelling at her over the phone. It seemed to have some effect as she was swaying ok, ok. Then she hung up and tried to call her boss in Zhitomer. She would not do this without her knowledge of it. Then her boss’s boss, who works here, wandered in and asked what was going on. She told him and he said he had no problem with filling out the certificates. She also said she had no problem. He left, and she continued trying to reach her boss.
Finally she got her and the two of them decided they were not going to follow the judge’s order. We went to see the judge in his office. He assured us that his order was good and that they had no right to hold us up, in spite of this letter. He referred again to the case we wrote about last week where the Radomischle orphanage was accused of selling children to foreigners and said that everyone was nervous because of this. If we were in any other city, this would not be happening now. He would speak with the clerk’s boss and call us later.
We had a tasteless snack for lunch and went back to her office. Her boss’s boss came back in and his tune had changed as well. His suggestion was that we simply wait 10 days. He couldn’t see why that should be a problem.
While he was out, our girl scout of a clerk started reading the civil code and came up with what was surely a sound legal argument to bolster their case for refusing us, and she gave that to her boss’s boss too.
We were sunk. For a brief shining moment, it looked like we had a chance to leave this country with our sanity intact. But it was all quickly slipping through our fingers.
The judge told Svieta he would make some other phone calls and see if he could come up with a solution in the morning. There is always hope I suppose. But you can imagine how we are feeling.
(Lauren: It ain’t over till the fat Ukrainian lady sings and as rattled as we are, I’m still hanging my hopes on our friend, the judge.)
Without the birth certificates, no passports and also, we understand, probably no custody of the kids either. We’ll be stuck here in Zhitomer making the daily drive and visits to both orphanages for another two weeks because the 10 day period ends on Saturday January 6th, and everything is closed for their Christmas on Monday the 8th. The earliest we can apply for the certificates will be Tuesday the 9th.
The kids are ready to leave. They don’t understand why we can’t be together any more than we do. We’re bored with the confines of their schools and the lack of private time with them. It’s just crazy.
It’s such a shame that this country is so held back by its meaningless bureaucracy. That people are made to channel so much energy into paper pushing and document pandering instead of into productive work. And that the best interests of two worthy orphans are voided so cheaply because one bureaucrat or another figured out a new way to say no.