Mardi Link: Family trees pruned for privacy hurt the innocent

Mar. 31—About this time last year, someone left a faxed press release on my desk in the newsroom, announcing how, in a nearby county, a long-serving judge was retiring.

Not exactly breaking news, no hot tip on what I usually cover for the paper — which tends toward investigative stories about people or institutions facing problems, making mistakes or behaving badly.

In the past two years, for example, I've published dozens of stories about families caught up in the state's ineffective guardianship system, as administered by probate court judges.

But this press release had nothing to do with misdeeds — just the opposite, in fact.

This judge was well-liked and respected, the longest serving probate court judge in Michigan's history, and his father had been a judge before him, in the same county.

What had me so interested wasn't their job, it was their surname.

I'm adopted — aspects of which I've previously explored in this column. And about the time that fax landed on my desk, I'd managed to compile a biological family tree that was as complete as I could make it.

Roots, trunk and a couple limbs, but with a lot of branches and leaves missing.

That's because Michigan is what's referred to in the adoption community as a donut-hole state, meaning state law here inexplicably regulates adopted people's access to their own birth records by when your birth parents rights were terminated.

If, like me, your adoption was approved by the court after May 28, 1945, but before Sept. 12, 1980, you're going to need a court order to get a copy of your original birth certificate.

Yes, I'm a donut-hole baby.

(An aside — I'm months away from qualifying for Social Security, I wear bifocals and color my gray hair — volcanic safari, if you're wanting the shade — yet Michigan law still considers me an infant.)

But I'm also a decent researcher, and from records I'd begged, borrowed or otherwise acquired, I recognized the judge's surname as my birthmother's maiden name.

I did some digital tree-climbing through a genealogical database and figured out how the judge and I are related. He is my birth mother's first cousin.

Explained another way, my birth grandpa was the judge's uncle.

(Stay with me here. I promise not to go down the "I'm My Own Grandpa" rabbit hole.)

Finding a new (and living!) relative can be dicey for adoptees. For me, the excitement of connecting with someone who is family, and might be able to provide information about my heritage is tempered with all kinds of dread.

I have no way of knowing whether this new person even knows I exist, or if they do, what they've been told about my secretive beginnings.

I don't know how they feel about my desire to access our shared family history, how much they know about Michigan's closed records laws or how they might react to an unexpected email, phone call or letter.

Only one way to find out, I said to myself last winter, sticking the stamp on the envelope.

Which is how I came to be carrying watermelon across a field last Memorial Day, where I met a couple dozen of the judge's, and my, relatives for the first time at a family picnic.

Fast forward to January 2024.

The court commissioned a portrait of the judge and would be unveiling it at a public celebration when the courtroom would be re-named in the judge's honor.

"Just wanted to send this your way," one of the judge's sisters texted me, with a screenshot of the invitation. "Some of us are going."

Of course, I went.

And of course, I felt nervous as I sat in the back of the courtroom. This was the judge's day, and while I'd been invited I did not want to do anything to take the focus away from him and his accomplishment.

My plan was to observe silently, revel in my relative's public service, see if I had a physical resemblance to anyone there, then slip out the back.

Did I mention these are my relatives?

Of course they recognized me from the Memorial Day picnic (the judge has enough siblings to field a baseball team) and of course they asked why the heck I was sitting way back there.

Two of the judge's sisters insisted I sit with them up near the front, where we chatted amiably (them) and awkwardly (me) then listened to public accolades — some of the most heartfelt came from people the judge had fined or sentenced.

"Of course you need to meet him," one of the judge's sisters said, linking her arm in mine.

Michigan law says I'm not supposed to know I'm related to these terrific women, or their accomplished brother.

Michigan law says that when it comes to my civil rights, for records that were created for me and are about me, I have no claim, even as an adult.

Michigan law says that other people can access my records — court staff, judges, social workers — but not me.

Two proposed House bills, HB5148 and HB5149, passed 99-8 in November, aim to address this unfairness. When they were debated last month in the Senate's Civil Rights, Judiciary and Public Safety Committee, religious, social service and nonprofit organizations testified against their passage.

My interpretation of their message: We can't have adoptees learning all the secrets behind their past. It would show how many mistakes were made, and keep us from making more.

Merissa Kovach, ACLU Michigan legislative director, told Michigan Advance she had an "incredible amount of sympathy" for adoptees, but passage of the bills might weaken privacy expectations for those who might relinquish a child for adoption.

This is the premiere civil rights organization in Michigan, prioritizing a possible harm for possible birth parents, over daily and ongoing harm to hundreds of thousands of actual adopted adults.

Sen. Jim Runestad, R-White Lake, in his public comments said when a secret adoption in his extended family was "unearthed," it "created hell within the family."

Lawmakers are fond of telling constituents that in a free society, we must live with the consequences of our actions.

Unless you're a Michigan adoptee. Then you have to live with the consequences of other people's actions. And be grateful for it.

I shook the judge's hand that day, and of course, it felt natural. Ordinary. One cousin congratulating another cousin on a life well lived.

"I hope you don't mind that I passed your letter onto my sister, she's the family historian," the judge said, smiling.

I don't mind. Not at all.

E-mail Senior Reporter Mardi Link at mlink@record-eagle.com.