Hello, everyone. This would be my first post on this forum. My name is morgan. I am soon to be 20 years old and I have a beautiful little girl.
Anyways. When I was 13 years old, I found out I had a biological half sister through my father. Now, there is a possibility that she is still a minor and I have gathered a bunch of information on her and I am not going to say anything about that because I recently found out it is illegal to post information about a minor on the internet.
This is my dilemma. Her mother vowed, when we were infants, to keep me and our biological fathers family secret from her. I have tried making contact through my sisters Aunt and then they severed that contact with me. I feel I have a right to know her, and I honestly believe if she knew the truth she would want the opportunity to get to know me and her neice as well.
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The problem being she could still be a minor, because her exact birthday I am not sure of. **
So I narrowed it down to 5 possible high Schools that she could attend for the area that she lives in.
Should I write all the schools, with a letter addressed to her and one addressed to the principal stating I am trying to get in contact with a distant family member due to an emergency and hope they deliver my letter?
Even before then, what do you say? I have been doing this for 6 years and I finally found her and now I don’t know what to say**…I need help. **
I very much doubt a school administrator would pass a letter onto your sister. They are more likely to pass it onto her parents.
I feel a bit torn about your situation. I’m leaning towards the fact that if she is a minor, then her parents get to decide what she does and doesn’t know about any half siblings. I might not agree with their actions, but I think whilst she is a minor, you need to respect them.
No. I understand that you want to know your sister, but it’s best to wait until you know she’s an adult. If she doesn’t know you exist, it could cause trouble between her and her mother. I don’t think it would be right to do that while she’s a minor.
When she is 18, she will be able to make her own decisions about who she wants to have contact with. Your desire to go full steam ahead at this point is selfish. It would be tossing a bomb into her life when she is essentially powerless. Wait until she is 18 before you attempt to contact her again.
You don’t need help, you need to wait a few years.
I recently found out it is illegal to post information about a minor on the internet.
Explain how Justin Beber has such a large web presence.
A friend was in a similar situation. She has a brother that she knew about, but the brother’s mother never told him about his half-sister. Once he turned 18, she contacted him through Facebook.
I have no way of knowing when she turns 18. I have narrowed down that she is anywhere between a year to 3 years younger than me. There is a possibility that she is already over age. Our biological father either won’t tell me, or really can’t remember anything like he claims. I have no way of knowing her exact birthday. I do not even know what she looks like. Im sure since we are half sisters we would have SOME resemblance…But then again maybe not. So how do I go about that?
Go through yearbook photos at the school library or town library
Search newspaper indexes for birth announcements, graduation, etc
Use online newspaper archives to try and build a timeline, i.e. “SDMB Senior Sally Smith receives Good Citizen award for work at nursing home” “… is accepted to Community College” etc.
Many teenagers love to put every thought that enters their head out there for the world to see. Try Facebook and MySpace.
The worst that could happen is that you have to wait 3 years to be sure.
You wait 3 years (You’re 19, minus three years means she could be 15 or 16, depending on when her birthday falls in the calender year) until she MUST BE 18, and then you try again.
I don’t blame your Aunts for severing contact. The child’s legal guardian has said no contact, and to maintain contact after that would be hugely disrespectful to her and disruptive to the child/parent relationship.
Now, do I agree with her mother’s choice? Abso-fucking-lutely not. I can think of very few reasons one should ethically hide the circumstances of one’s birth from a child. I think she’s wrong to do it, and I think someday it will bite her in the ass when the girl finds out she’s been kept in the dark. If she doesn’t hear from you, one of those Aunts will slip up sooner or later. But that’s the situation the mother has created for herself, and she’ll have to take her lumps someday. You don’t need to hasten the process.
Unless you have good reason to believe she’s being abused, stay out of her life. There are a thousand ways your persisting could hurt her.
You need to wrap your head around the idea that you cannot force your way into someone’s life, you cannot force a relationship. And the surest way to ruin any chance, is to try.
You’ve already burned some bridges, from the sounds of things, with aunts and parents. That’s a big mistake. You need to back the hell off.
You need to give her a chance to get to, where you are. Adult, curious, initiating, from both sides.
And I tell you all this as someone who has successfully navigated reunion.
I think you would do better to try to contact her mother directly this time. Be sure to be very respectful of her wishes in your letters/emails, making it clear that you respect her decisions even if you don’t agree. You can always try again when your sister is an adult. But it would be much better if her mother sees you as an awesome person for her daughter to have around as an example, right?
The only reason the mother stated NO CONTACT was because of our biological father. He is an alcoholic and a drug abuser. My mother told me when I was 8 years old that my “dad” was my “dad” but not my father. In my opinion I believe [[MOTHER]] should have thought to do the same for Jessica. Jessica’s mother [[DELETED]] should have known that one day sooner or later one of us (or possibly both) were going to find out the truth. And that one of us was going to start asking questions and searching. I do NOT have any contact with my father or any of his family. I made that mistake to look him up. I understand that maybe the reason [[MOTHER]] does not want Jessica to know the truth is because of how my father is and because of lies she built around her. I have given [[MOTHER]] or any of Jessica’s other family not to trust me. They refuse to even communicate with me. She is my sister. I have every right to know her. Based on information I recently found Jessica is 18. In a few weeks. That puts her around a year and a half younger than me, seeing I am soon to turn 20. I am not tring to force a relationship down her throat. I believe she needs to know the truth. If I initiate contact and she decides that she does not want a any type of relationship with someone that IS her sister but ultimately a stranger, I completely understand. I could not say how I would feel in her shoes, seeing that I was told the truth at a young age. But I do not believe it is right what her mother has done. If Jessica decides that she doesn’t want a relationship and doesn’t want any contact with me, then I will respect that and leave it as it is. But I do not feel as if her mother has the right to continue to bury the truth and let her live a lie even after the age of 18.
The only way at this point for me to even begin to get her to see the truth is by her seeing the marriage liscense between her mother and our father. Our father signed over all rights, therefore her mother was able to change her birthcertificate and birth name. At birth she was [[NAME REMOVED]]. Because her mother was remarried and the man adopted Jessica as his own. [[MOTHER]] had her birth certificate changed, and her last name changed so she is now [[NAME REMOVED]].
She is my sister. I know some people don’t care. Some people say blood doesn’t necessarily make family, but I can not give up on the chance that we COULD have a relationship. I know to some people it doesn’t matter. And I am not doing this search by myself. I have some friends helping me, and Until the past few weeks, I have been doing the search by myself, when others stepped into help, over these past few weeks I have learned a lot of information.
And I’m sure Jessica and her mom will both be thrilled to see that you have put their dirty family laundry on the internet for all eternity, for anyone who has ever known or will know them in the future, to see.
After my father died, I found out he had fathered (yet another) child out of wedlock before he met and married my mom. My half-sister’s mom was so ticked off at my dad for getting her pregnant, she severed all ties with him and he never heard from her again. So I can relate a little to you in this situation.
Your half-sister is probably still a minor and your bio-dad could make her and her mom’s life a living hell by dragging the mom through family court just out of spite.
This could be a really really really bad time to force your way into this girls’ life. Whatever issues you want to resolve by forcing this reunion probably are not issues affecting your half-sister. There is time for that, later, when she’s a legal adult. Let things be for a few years.
Oh my god, leave her alone. Speaking as someone who was contacted out of the blue like this, it just about destroyed my life for years. Just, back off. I want to say so much harsher things to you - who are you to decide what she needs to know or doesn’t? but I will get warned because this is the wrong forum.
Just leave her alone. Let her grow up on her own. She doesn’t need you. If circumstances work out that she finds out you can proceed from there.
Again, please note I am speaking from experience. I got the same bullshit line “You have a right to know”. It took me years to recover from the shock and the total uncaring way it was delivered.
Morgan, you need to think very carefully about the possible worst-case outcomes (several have been outlined above) and then think about the fact that you’re doing this FOR YOURSELF. You’re not doing this for her - she doesn’t give a flying fuck about you, seeing as she doesn’t know you exist.
