OMAHA, Neb.—An adoption agency and birth mother want to take back a 3-month-old baby boy from a couple who wanted to give him a home, after learning that the adoptive mother was pregnant.
The 22-year-old biological mother says in court documents that she wanted the parents who adopted her son to not have their own biological children. She wanted them to either raise her son alone or adopt more kids if they wanted to expand their family.
But Jason and Angela Vesely say they didn’t purposely hide Angela’s pregnancy when they applied to adopt a child. They say they were never asked if she was pregnant by the private agency and didn’t know it had rules against applying mothers being pregnant.
Angela Vesely, 32, said she planned to tell the biological mother, Megan Lynn Morgan of Sutherland, and a caseworker about her pregnancy but was waiting because she had miscarried three children previously. Jason Vesely said his wife was more than 4 months pregnant when the agency assigned the child to them. They applied to adopt in 2005.
The baby was living with the Veselys, who brought him to their home in Verdigre from the hospital four days after he was born in North Platte. The baby was known by two names, Brett Morgan and Morgan Vesely, according to court documents.
The agency confronted the Veselys after finding out that Angela was pregnant in December. The Veselys were told they had to return the baby two days later, Jason Vesely said.
Instead, the couple turned to the courts, and a Knox County judge granted them emergency guardianship of the baby. The agency has since filed a motion asking the judge to order the Veselys to turn over the baby to the agency.
“We have bonded as a family and cannot imagine our lives without Morgan,” Angela Vesely said in an e-mail to The Associated Press. “He is our son.”
Attempts to reach Morgan were unsuccessful. Lawyers for Morgan, the Nebraska Children’s Home Society, the Veselys and a court-appointed attorney for the baby did not return multiple phone calls from The Associated Press.
A hearing on the motion is scheduled for Monday, and the judge in the case appointed the independent lawyer to represent the interests of the baby.
Couples with children under 18 months cannot apply to adopt children from the agency, according to the private agency’s eligibility requirements. And couples must wait until their own children are 2 years old before the agency will place a child with them.
Meanwhile, the biological mother has filed a separate complaint, asking a judge to invalidate the original adoption agreement she signed with the Nebraska Children’s Home Society and grant her permanent custody. Morgan said in court documents filed in Lincoln County that she would have never let the Veselys adopt her son if she knew they wanted to have their own biological child.
A hearing on Morgan’s complaint had not yet been scheduled.
Morgan said in the complaint that she suspected Angela Vesely was pregnant when they met and asked an agency official about it. But the official said the adoptive mother was “just chubby, not pregnant,” according to the complaint.
The agency generally tries to find out whether couples applying to adopt a child are already expecting children, said Karen Authier, executive director of the Nebraska Children’s Home Society.
She would not say specifically how that is done—if applying mothers are asked whether they are pregnant in a written application or whether caseworkers followed proper procedures in this case.
“We’ve been doing adoption for 115 years, and this is a most unusual case,” Authier said. “We know that successful adoptions are based on a circle of trust and truth.”
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