This case concerns
the interplay of the Adoption Code and the Paternity Act. The respondent
parents were never married and had spent only a few days together before the
subject child was born. Respondent father initially went along with respondent
mother’s idea of placing the child for adoption, but later changed his mind
after the child was placed with petitioners, the prospective adoptive parents.
The circuit court denied petitioners’ request for an order of adoption,
terminated the child’s temporary placement with them, returned custody of the
child to respondent mother, and restored her parental rights. While the
adoption appeal was pending, a different circuit court, in respondent father’s
paternity action, entered an order of filiation. The Court of Appeals granted an
emergency stay of the adoption decision, and subsequently, in an unpublished opinion,
dismissed the adoption appeal as moot. While petitioners’ first application for
leave to appeal was pending in the Supreme Court, the Court of Appeals, in Sarna v Healy (COA Docket No. 341211), reversed
the circuit court’s order denying the intervening prospective adoptive parents’
motion for a stay of proceedings, holding that the circuit court had abused its
discretion in refusing to stay the paternity action. The Sarna court also granted the intervening prospective adoptive
parents’ motion for stay and instructed that the child be returned to their care
pending the Supreme Court’s resolution of the adoption appeal and pending a
decision after an evidentiary hearing regarding custody. By order of January
24, 2018, the Supreme Court vacated the judgment of the Court of Appeals in
this adoption case and remanded the case to that court for reconsideration in
light of the Court of Appeals order in Sarna.
On remand, the same Court of Appeals panel considered the Sarna order, but held that because Sarna had not vacated the order of filiation, petitioners’ appeal
would be again dismissed as moot for the reasons stated in its earlier
decision. The panel also remarked that it was bound to follow the Court of
Appeals decision in In re MGR (COA
Docket No. 338286), since the
pertinent facts were the same. Because the respondent father had become LMB’s
legal father, the Court of Appeals held that it was impossible to remand the
adoption case for a determination of whether his rights should be terminated
under Section 39 of the Adoption Code, MCL 710.39, which it found to be only
applicable to putative fathers. The Supreme Court has directed oral argument on
petitioners’ application for leave to appeal to address: (1) whether the Court
of Appeals erred in determining that the circuit court’s decisions under
Section 39 of the Adoption Code, MCL 710.39, were moot in light of the order of
filiation that entered in the paternity action; and (2) whether In re MKK, 286 Mich App 546 (2009),
should be overruled. This case will be
heard at the same session as In re MGR
(Nos.157821-2).