A sharply divided Illinois Supreme Court ruled Thursday that the 18-year-old man known as Baby Richard must attend Illinois State University in the fall. In separate dissents, one justice found that Baby Richard should study marine biology at Northwestern, another said he should play basketball at DePaul, and Justice James Heiple said it was long past time for the ungrateful freeloader to get out of the house and get a real job.
By the time he is 18, maybe the courts will have had their fill of playing surrogate parent for Danny Kirchner. Maybe, but after this week it doesn’t seem likely.
From the beginning, I’ve believed the child belonged with Jay and Kimberly Warburton, the couple who adopted him when his mother, Daniela, gave him up in the midst of her little lovers’ quarrel with his father, Otakar “Otto” Kirchner.
Without retelling the whole Baby Richard story, it came down to a few things. Daniela willingly gave him up to be adopted by the Warburtons. For four years they provided a good home and were caring parents. Otto’s story about searching high and low for the child he never knew was full of holes.
Danny belonged with the Warburtons. And Danny probably would have stayed with the Warburtons, if Appellate Judge Dom Rizzi hadn’t mixed good intentions with unnecessary bravado.
Rizzi wrote the decision that rejected Otto’s claim to the child. But Rizzi got carried away, writing an opinion that created broad new case law including an arbitrary 18-month limit on switching babies in disputed adoptions. He all but goaded the Illinois Supreme Court into reversing him.
Rizzi was only the first judge to get carried away with the Baby Richard case. The Supreme Court overruled the appellate court and upended what was supposed to be a final, legal adoption. A terrible decision, made worse by Supreme Court Justice James Heiple’s opinion. Heiple thought this case was about him, not a child. So he used a court opinion to skewer the governor and the news media and other judges and even Danny’s adoptive parents.
And so the awful thing was done. The child was wrenched from his parents and given to the strangers who had conceived him. One of those strangers, Otto, has since given ample proof that he can be a lout. The man who professed through years of court battles that life wouldn’t be complete without the presence of his son up and left his family and took up housekeeping with another woman.
Were you surprised? Of course not. If there’s any upside, it’s that Otto has made the rest of us citizens of maledom look pretty good by comparison.
If Otto and Daniela were unlucky in love, they were also unlucky in lawyers, at least judging from the advice they apparently got that it would be a good idea to wander back into a courtroom.
Daniela lives with Danny, but legally is not his mother. So she went to court to get a judge to revoke her decision to give up her rights to her son. She should have known she didn’t have a snowball’s chance of winning. She should have known that, just by trying, she was going to put her home life back on the big stage.
She finally figured that out, because she tried to withdraw her case from the court.
And that’s when Circuit Judge Gay-Lloyd Lott said, “Gotcha!”
He wouldn’t let her withdraw. “I think when you put this case back in court, you put everything on the table,” Lott told Daniela.
To my mind, those are scary words from Lott.
Not as scary as the decision of the Supreme Court to overturn a legal adoption, a decision that sent a shiver through every adoptive parent in the state. But scary nonetheless.
Judge Lott isn’t supposed to be running a sting operation. Daniela Kirchner isn’t one of those witless fugitives who gets the notice that he’s won a free 27-inch TV and is arrested when he shows up at the local Holiday Inn to collect.
Daniela Kirchner went to the court seeking its assistance. She thought better of that. Then she found that she couldn’t escape. Not only wouldn’t Judge Lott let her go, he sicked the family inspectors on her.
To what end? So someone clutching his masters degree in social work can parade into Danny Kirchner’s living room for an afternoon and pronounce the boy happy, hale and hearty? Or clinically depressed?
And then what? So the courts can toss around Danny Kirchner for another few years, confuse him, maybe send him to another home?
The child is 6, and has lived with the Kirchners for two years. That’s his home.
Many of the arguments that once weighed in favor of leaving the child with the Warburtons–that the child shouldn’t be yanked from his home, that the child shouldn’t be confused, that the child shouldn’t be hostage to the courts–work the other way now.
If there is reason to think that Danny Kirchner is being mistreated, the courts should step in.
If Daniela Kirchner tries again to revoke her decision to give up parental rights, or tries to adopt the child she gave away, the courts will have every right to shine a big light in her living room. And the courts would be entirely justified to tell her, “Forget it.”
And if Daniela and Otto could ever see it in their hearts to let the boy see his brother and adoptive parents again, well, they’d make up for a lot of the awful things they’ve done.
But the courts, they’ve done enough for now.
Supreme Court Justice Michael Bilandic blocked Lott’s ruling and ordered the judge to explain himself. As much as the Supreme Court’s decision to take Danny Kirchner away from the Warburtons was vile, Bilandic’s decision this week was honorable.
The courts have played cruel tricks on Danny Kirchner, and the courts can’t undo the damage. Playing gotcha was just one more trick.
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E-mail: Bdold@tribune.com
