Our Day in Court

Monday was our day in court ... the day we'd been waiting for and the day we officially became Brooke's parents! It started out with sun and blue skies ... always a good sign ever since we've been here. Kristi wasn't nervous, but was very excited. While I too was excited, I was also a bit nervous because I would have to speak before the court. Neither Kristi nor I have ever been in a live court hearing before even in the United States. Chalk up yet another first experience for us here in Ukraine!

Yuri picked us up at 7:30 in the morning and we had to drop by the child welfare building to pick up the regional social worker, Lena. She would represent the interests of Ukraine and the ocmmunity in court. We drove to the court house South of Kharkiv and Yuri dropped the three of us off. He then went to the orphanage to pick up their lawyer, Victoria (the girl that is always running from building to building because it's cold). She would represent the interests and opinion of the orphanage.

The court house was an old, 2-story building just off the highway. We passed through a metal detector on our way in and both set it off ... especially me with my backpack full of camera and computer equipment. No one paid any attention to us or stopped us, however. The guard just asked to see our passports, but couldn't read English and couldn't find our names on the passports. Fortunately, the social working had a document with our names on them in Cyrillic, so I pointed them out to the guard and he wrote them in the log.

We sat quite a while on a bench in the hallway of the courthouse waiting for Yuri to return. Across the hall were two big guys in their early sixties talking and laughing together. They had kind eyes and you could tell they were friends ... they kind of reminded us of Serge. We thought they were here for another court appointment, but they asked the social worker about us. I could understand enough Russian to know the social worker said we were adopting a child and that the men asked if we were Italians. I was able to respond and say, "Nyet. Mwee Amerikanski." That intrigued them and they started talking to me, but soon figured out that I had just exhausted my knowledge of the Russian language. :-)

About five minutes before our court time, Yuri returned with the orphanage lawyer. It always seems that things happen like this in Ukraine ... there's never much of a cushion, but somehow things always seem to get done just in the nick of time. We headed into the court room and to our surprise, the two men also went with us and proceeded to sit on the bench. It turns out they were representatives from the local community who form an oversight committee for all court proceedings. The court room was small with a mini jail over on the side where defendants sit during criminal trials. Glad we didn't have to sit in there! We were only there for a short time when the judge ... a woman in her 50s ... came through the door. Everyone stood as she was seated, she asked us all to sit, and the hearing began.

I'll try to keep the description of the hearing short, but it lasted about 45 minutes. The entire session was recorded and every document had to be read out loud. The judge asked everyone in the room to identify themselves and state their date of birth. Kristi and I stood and told our names and birth dates while Yuri translated. The judge then read the official request from us to adopt Brooke and the social worker and orphanage lawyer made their statements. The judge then asked Kristi and I to stand and say why we wanted to adopt Brooke. We simply said that we have wanted a child for 12 years, we knew that Svetlana was the child that was meant for us all along, and the we loved her from the very first day we saw her. The judge asked if we have visited Svetlana and how often and we responded that we had seen her every day for the past three weeks. The orphanage lawyer confirmed this for the judge.

There were some more legal proceedings ... statements from the social working and orphanage lawyer both saying they agreed it was in the best interest of Brooke that we adopt her. The judge asked us if we knew Brooke's health conditions, if we were aware that she was "educated" in the orphanage for the past 15 months, and that her development was probably slowed a bit as a result. These are all standard statements that they are supposed to say during hearings like this. She also asked if we knew our responsibilities to take care of Brooke, that she would have dual Ukraine / US citizenship until age 18, and what our responsibilities were to regularly report back to Ukranian authorities. We reponded yes to all questions.

Eventually the judge asked me to stand and state what we wanted from the court. Yuri had coached us on this already and I responded, "We ask the court to allow us to adopt Svetlana, to name us as her legal parents, and to change her name to Brooke Aslan Shanfelt in all legal documents." She then asked Kristi if she had anything more to add and Kristi said no. The judge the went into recess with the two associates and ten excuriating minutes later the returned to read the final ruling. "According to the laws of Ukraine and of the region of Kharkiv, this court declares that the child is hereby legally adopted by Shanfelt, Eric Wayne and Shanfelt, Kristi Lynn. They shall be named in all legal documents as her parents and the child's name shall be changed in all legal documents to Shanfelt, Brooke Aslan." We could barely hold back the tears as she read the judgement out loud and Yuri translated it for us.

The judge then said there would be a mandatory ten-day waiting period before we could take her from the orphanage and then the hearing was over. The two men from the local community came up to us, shook our hands, and congratulated us. We showed them a photo of Brooke so they could see the little girl whose life they changed forever that day. It was done ... we were Brooke's legal parents!

Yuri took the social worker back to Kharkiv and we waited in the court hallway. He returned about a half hour later and took us and Victoria back to the orphanage. On the ride there, Victoria told us through Yuri that before we came, Brooke was very serious and rarely smiled. But she said that after we started visiting Brooke, every time Victoria saw her, she was smiling and happy. That really made us feel good! WE only had about 20 minutes to spend with Brooke ... OUR GIRL! ... at the orphanage before we had to go back to town.

That night we celebrated with Angel and Mariel at a restaurant telling them all about our court experience. They have their court date tomorrow, Thursday, so please be praying for them too.