I suspect for a while that I have a stepmother or stepfather besides my biological parents who raised me. One of the ways that I think I can learn whether this is true is contacting an official authority in the country of which I think my adopter has citizenship.
Another way to learn is to ask my biological parents, but I do not trust them.
There is a type of adoption in France named “simple adoption”. In this type of adoption, the adopted person can maintain family ties with his biological parents. I suspect that I am adopted in that way although I do not have a French citizenship.
I wonder whether there is an official authority (in France) that I can go and ask whether I have been adopted.
I would appreciate if you could provide information on this.
Does “biological parents” mean something different in France? Because in the US, the biological parents of an adopted child are the ones who gave birth to/provided the sperm for creating the child, while the adoptive parents are the ones who adopted and raised the child. And a step-parent is another thing entirely. (Remember the fairy tale Cinderella about the evil stepmother?)
Are you sure you’re using the correct terminology here? If you were raised by your biological parents (who supposedly are still married to each other), who would these step parents be?
<nitpick>
Technically, it’s the people who gave either the sperm or the egg that developed into the child. And the egg donor is not always the one who gave birth. For example, in the case of a gestational surrogate, the biological mothers’ egg is fertilized by the biological fathers’ sperm, then implanted in the womb of a surrogate, who eventually gives birth to the child. But that surrogate is not a biological mother to the child – in fact, they have no biological (DNA) connection at all.
This makes no sense. Assuming that you don’t in fact mean your biological parents raised you, what makes you think you’re adopted? If your biological parents are the ones who raised you, who do you think are your adoptive parents?
I think MaverocK may be wondering if one of his parents may have been married to someone else at some time.
In the U.S. marriage records are generally available from either the state or county where the marriage was performed. No idea what the situation is in France.
I think there’s just som e klutzy phrasing here. I think it means “Besides my [step]parents who raised me, I think I have biological parents.”
Now, I don’t know whether the OP is using “step-parent” to mean adoptive parent, or whether the OP means that he (or she) was raised by a step-parent without being told it was not his biological parent.
I apologize for ambiguity. Let me clarify the situation the best I can.
I have biological parents: a father who provided the sperm for my creation and a mother who gave birth to me. They raised me. They are not my adoptive parents. Because I am genetically/biologically connected to them, they are my biological parents. I hope I used the expression “biological parents” correctly.
My suspicion:
While my biological parents were raising me, I was adopted by another person. Despite the adoption, I lived with my biological parents and my biological parents kept raising me after the adoption. I did not live with my adoptive parent.
Now, I would like to learn if this adoption really happened. I don’t know how I can confirm whether the adoption happened or not. Which official authority should I contact?
Why would people adopt you but leave you living with your birth parents, never taking you to live with them? And maintain complete secrecy, these many years?
And why wouldn’t your (birth) parents be open and honest about such a thing if it did occur? Why can’t you simply ask them?
Do you think you know the identity of the person (s) you believe adopted you, but left you in the care of your bio parents without a word? Why do you suspect this happened? You mentioned that you are not a French citizen; is there a reason you believe you were adopted by a French citizen?
OK. Sometimes in the US, mentally disabled people who provided questionable care for their children were assigned mentors to teach them how to better-care for the child, and in the meantime, the child was given a court-appointed guardian who would look in on the child from time to time, and had the right to remove the child if the guardian deemed it was necessary. Often the guardian was a relative-- either a grandparent or one of the parents siblings, but sometimes it was a person who had volunteered to be a guardian for at-risk children, and had special training.
We tried to catch situations that were “at risk,” but not already bad, and very fixable. Almost all the time, these were mildly MR people who lived alone with very little help, usually someone who came in a couple of times to go over a housekeeping checklist, and make sure the bills were getting paid. Most of the time, these were adults who held jobs independently, and often even had driver’s licenses. The guardians did not in any sense adopt the children, but once in a while, the parents would have a bad reaction to the idea of having a guardian, because they “didn’t want to put their children up for adoption.” Invariably, it had been suggested to them that they do this with their child when they first became pregnant.
FWIW, about half the time, these were single women, and half the time they were married couples. Almost always, when they were married couples, the husband was the father of the child.
At some point, the parents would be allowed to ask that the guardianship be terminated. They would have to show improvement, which many of them were motivated to do, and sometimes the age of the child was a consideration-- a toddler is more vulnerable than a 10-year-old.
I don’t know what France is like, but could something like this have happened to the OP?
Other than that, it must have something to do with inheritance. The only adoptions I know of where there are parents have to do with inheritance. Years ago, before gay marriage was permitted, I know of a few gay couples where one adopted the other to make sure that a will wouldn’t be contested, because the one doing the adopting had significantly more money than the other one, and siblings or cousins who might interfere with a will where the money was left to the partner.
I might as well mention my own situation, although I wasn’t left with my bio parents-- my parents let me live with my aunt and uncle when I was in high school, and so my aunt and uncle had guardianship so they could authorize medical care for me, and various other things. They were legal papers, and even got me into the university as my uncle’s “child” under faculty-child fee remission. My aunt and uncle didn’t adopt me, though, and when I was staying with my parents in the summer, my parents were still legally my parents.
If the OP ever stayed for a time with anyone else (say, more than a month), for whatever reason-- his parents took an extended trip, one of his parents was ill, there are lots of possibilities-- there might be legal papers somewhere that gave the French equivalent of power of attorney to the person the OP stayed with. That’s not an adoption.
