Done Adulting Vol. 2 Ch. 6

Stacy did her best to calm herself down. She was failing. She re-read the notes from her conversation with the attorney she’d contacted, and she found them less reassuring each time. When she adopted Ella, Stacy never foresaw something like this happening, and neither had the Department of Human Services or, apparently, the law. The lawyer offered a lot of speculation and refused, as good lawyers do, to offer anything definitive. Stacy was a smart, professionally successful person, and even she struggled to follow the legal logic the lawyer had laid out.

A next of kin from the other dimension had the right to demand the return family abducted into the dimension, and Itali courts were a favorite venue for pressing such claims as the government prided itself on doing everything it could to stop little trafficking. The little was automatically returned to their family if the next of kin won the claim. The claims were nearly always successful but rarely enforceable as the little in question was rarely in Itali, and in fact, if they were and the authorities knew, the little would be taken into protective custody and the big arrested, no civil claim necessary, and the little returned to where they came from. Ella had certainly been abducted into the dimension.

But she had also subsequently been legally brought into Itali and legally adopted. Not “legally” in the Aidu or Ros sense, but legally under Itali law and with the express approval of the regulators and the judge who had been tasked with figuring out what to do with this rescued little girl, a topic the law purposefully left vague to enable each case to be dealt with flexibly, fitting the specific circumstances. The lawyer was fairly certain the facial legality of the adoption and Ella’s consent to it would trump the circumstances of her arrival in the dimension, but at the time of her adoption there had been considerable discussion as to whether Ella, after all she had been through and still in the process of her recovery, could consent to being adopted, or whether she was effectively so coerced by her situation that she could not legally consent.

Then there was the treaty law between Itali and Ella’s home country and the laws of that country, which naturally tilted toward the littles. The lawyer had to ask colleagues to help him interpret those laws, but there was consensus that as Ella had been abducted after the age of majority where she came from, wasn’t mentally regressed, and had consented to her adoption by Stacy, there was no claim her family could make on her behalf there without first getting a judge to retroactively rule Ella incompetent at the time of her adoption. Which brought the matter back around to consent and whether a rescued little after eight years and still in recovery was able to consent free from coercion.

The lawyer thought it a good chance a judge in Ella’s home country would rule her incompetent at the time of her adoption but that such a ruling in itself would make little difference in an Itali court, which is what ultimately mattered as that’s where Ella physically was. A ruling of incompetence in Ella’s home country would make things more challenging for Stacy in Itali, but the official scrutiny the adoption originally received would act as a kind of shield, though an imperfect one.

Stacy would need the government, in the form of the Department of Human Services, to side with her to sustain the original ruling of informed consent. If a court in Ella’s home country retroactively declared her incompetent at the time of her adoption, it could put pressure on the government to side against Stacy in an effort to maintain good governmental relations in order to avoid that country shutting down adoptions in retaliation. If the government changed its mind and decided it had erred in declaring Ella had been competent to give consent, Stacy would be on her own in convincing a judge Ella had legally consented, a much harder task with the government of Ella’s home country and the government of Itali arguing otherwise. If the Department of Human Services reversed itself, it was likely game over for Stacy.

If Ella was incompetent at the time of the adoption, then the adoption never took place and Ella was still, legally speaking, abducted, and she’d be returned to her original family in accordance with the letter of the law. That ruling of incompetence would most likely presume Ella had remained incompetent to the present day as she had not, as an adopted little, exercised legal autonomy in all the years since. If Ella wanted to stay in Itali, she’d need someone to press a claim that she was now competent, which she couldn’t do on her own having been ruled incompetent, and could choose to be adopted now. However, absent a stay from a judge, Ella could be taken back to her home country immediately, whether she wanted to be or not, where the laws would tilt back in favor of her original family.

And it wasn’t clear who could press a claim of restored competence on her behalf. It wouldn’t be Stacy, who would have no legal standing to do so. And even if successful in such a claim in an Itali court, Itali would not be able to enforce the ruling once Ella was out of Itali. Ella would need to be declared competent in a court of her home country, which the lawyer doubted would happen as the court would date her rescue not from when she’d been brought to Itali but when she was brought back from the dimension, too recent to be regarded as sufficiently healed mentally or emotionally from what the court would consider her recent abduction to declare her competent to put herself up for adoption. And no adoption agency would likely even touch her case for fear of angering the regulators and court officers they had to work with every day in order to adopt out willing littles.

If Ella was ruled incompetent at the time Stacy adopted her, Stacy would likely never see her again.

Yet none of this had happened yet. It might not happen at all, and the uncertainty was chewing away at Stacy. She had no way of knowing what Ella’s kin might do, and when she asked if she could get a judge to issue a ruling proactively, the lawyer told her that under Itali law, courts could only issue rulings after a suit had been brought. Otherwise, there was no plaintiff, no defendant, no suit to resolve, and therefore nothing to issue a ruling on. Stacy understood why courts were barred from issuing rulings on theoretical suits, but she doubted the people who made that principle a part of Itali’s constitution ever envisioned something like this.

Stacy kept telling herself not to panic, not to let her mind wander to the worst possible scenario, but she couldn’t help it. She watched Ella sleep some nights and wept quietly at her cribside. She feared losing her. She feared the trauma that would be inflicted on Ella if it went to court even if she won. She feared the trauma just the news of her family knowing would cause.

Stacy tried to imagine it, what it would be like to be abducted, tortured, make peace with what amounted to her own death and rebirth, and then to have that rebirth undone not by strangers or people she hated but by people she loved, people she had grieved and given up and now, like her, had come back from beyond. Stacy couldn’t conceive of it. She couldn’t fathom what it would do to Ella, but words like devastateand destroy and ruin came to mind, words for civilizations wiped off maps, worlds pulled down. That’s what she imagined it would be like for Ella, her whole world pulled down again.

And Ella would be a legal bystander to whatever happened. Not being regressed, she’d be able to testify, and a judge would have to at least consider what she wanted. But Ella was an adopted little with limited rights. She could no more declare herself competent than a child could declare herself emancipated. What Ella wanted would not be legally binding. It was only one factor among many, and legally speaking, not the most important factor. A worse thought began creeping into Stacy’s mind. What wouldElla want?

Amidst all of this, Ben had become less responsive to Stacy’s calls and emails, though he hadn’t stopped talking to her entirely. Her lawyer told her the Department was probably figuring out what it could, should, and would do legally in these different scenarios, and definitely thinking about the liability their employee’s mistake in revealing Ella’s existence had exposed them to. Ben had probably been told to say as little as he could and to do nothing at all. Stacy had only the Department psychologist to rely on – the Department at least hadn’t taken her away – and she was of the opinion it was time to tell Ella.

Stacy wasn’t ready for that. She wanted to wait until there was news, something to tell Ella that was at least somewhat concrete. But the lawyer told her that news may come suddenly and could be the start of a crisis when it did. Better to tell Ella now before anything more happened and while Stacy was still in relative control of the situation.

A thought occurred to Stacy as she watched Ella sleep. If she couldn’t get a court to issue a ruling proactively, maybe she could try to head off the court system altogether. Maybe instead of waiting to see what Ella’s parents did, she could contact them and try to sway their decision.