To whom it may concern, ...

This letter is to tell my story and hopefully gain attention to a serious inequality unmarried fathers face in The United States. It is my hope that this may act as a cautionary tale to the unfairness unmarried men face when attempting to gain recognition as parents who wish to have a part in their child’s life.

My name is Garrett Joiner and I am a 21 year old soon-to-be graduate of the University of Alabama. I study business and commerce administration and am a Dean’s list student during multiple semesters while at Alabama. I have worked to pay my expenses through college and have been consistently employed since I was 15 years old. I have been employed as a guitar teacher since 2008 and subsequently taught children of all ages. While attending McIntosh High School in Peachtree City, GA, I was a member of The United States Civil Air Patrol as a certified ground team search and rescue member. I was also invited to be a member of the Honor Guard where I served in countless parades and ceremonies honoring the armed forces of our country. I have always maintained a GPA above 3.0 while being involved in several community organizations.
Earlier this year my girlfriend of 9 months discovered she was pregnant. I immediately was by her side and did everything I could to make her as comfortable as possible while we figured out the next steps. The next morning I drove her to a pregnancy center where our suspicions were confirmed. She was pregnant. We stayed together night and day and began to slowly decide what our plans were moving forward. The next weekend we visited my mother and father in Atlanta to try and provide some comfort for her during a very difficult time.
My girlfriend and her family are residents of San Diego, California. After the semester came to an end, she returned home to be with family and friends. I thought about her every second of every day and began to save money to relocate to San Diego to be closer to her. Shortly after this time I was approached by her father with the idea of placing the baby into adoptive custody once it was born.
I come from a family who has worked for everything we have for centuries to be the people we are today. We value our lineage and always support each other in times of need. Knowing I had a strong supportive family who would do anything they could to help, I adamantly refused to agree to any such thing. Primarily, this child was my blood. This was my family and most of all it was a child who would be loved and taken care of by our families. All in all, our network of families prides itself in sticking together and overcoming adversity.
As time went on, Communication between the mother’s family and I became less and less frequent despite my weeklong visit to San Diego to try and be with her and prepare to move closer to her during the pregnancy. I would continually call, text and email yet more times than not I would receive absolutely no reply. As time went on it became apparent to me that the mother’s family would proceed with the adoption with or without my consent. One day I received a letter telling me that a family had been chosen and that my consent was no longer needed. To add to the situation, communication had come to an absolute stand still. I continued to express my interest in the child and my girlfriend’s wellbeing. I was left in the dark with no way to know how my girlfriend was doing or how I could help her along during her pregnancy. I tried through several attempts to convince her that adoption was not a way to make this situation disappear. I was always understanding of the seriousness of the situation and wanted nothing more than for her to realize that I would do anything for her to make her happy. I am a man who was raised to do anything for his family and our child constitutes as family.
I come from a very close knit, loving family who would do anything for one another. I myself am constantly reminded of how fortunate I am to be raised around such a caring environment and would stop at no end to provide the same for my child. People hear time and time again how unmarried mothers are left with no father to help them raise and support their child. I understand that more times than not fathers disappear in an attempt to avoid their parental obligation. However, I would do anything for a family member and furthermore anything for the mother of my child despite our unexpected differences.
Flash forward to late August. With the baby being due in 4 months, and still absolutely no communication, I was very uneasy about how things were developing and enlisted the aid of legal counsel. Since then I have gone through virtually every channel possible to ensure that I will have the privilege to be able to know and love my child the way any natural father should be able to. I have flown cross country to California for court hearings and meetings only to arrive with the mother being absent. Even with a court ordered paternity test, I still have a minute chance of being granted any parental rights. California law provides no grounds for me to have any say in the future of my child. Since I am only an “assumed father,” (a label given to unmarried fathers) I have virtually no say in my child’s future. At the current time, it has come to my attention through research that in the last 15 years, only a handful of fathers in similar situations have been able to establish rights to prevent a contested adoption.
My concern is that fathers all over the country are faced with similar battles. I spend day and night researching case law with similar situations and read time and time again where fathers with perfectly sound backgrounds are denied their parental rights and watch helplessly as their biological children are given to perfect strangers. The only explanation men in my position are given is that they are simply subject to an unfair law. Imagine a man in my shoes with his whole life ahead of him, knowing that somewhere out there his child is in the hands of a person who he’s in many cases never even seen. Meanwhile, he himself has more than enough resources at his disposal to raise a child. Many young unmarried fathers do not have a voice. The cultural norm is for mothers to make the decisions in raising a child, yet men like myself are devastated and left with no choice as they watch a child they love given to the care of someone they may have never even met. Regardless of their character, unmarried men who wish to keep their children do not have a guarantee that such an option will be afforded to them in the state of California. I have no violent past, no criminal background, and am fully on my way to be a productive, college educated member of society. I have been deemed a fit father by guidelines set by the state, yet somehow it is unlikely I will be able to ever have even visitation of my biological child!
I am not unique. I am certain that men all over are faced with heartache day and night just like the heartache my family and I face every waking second. Imagine waiting months in limbo wondering what more you could do to ensure your rights are not terminated. It is an unfair set of precedents that court judges follow that limit the role of fathers in deciding the futures of their children. I want to again reiterate that the relationship that resulted in this pregnancy was not a fly by night accident between two strangers. I have always stood by her side and always took top priority to support her. I care very much for the wellbeing of my child’s mother, yet I am ignored and left to try to make sense of the situation with no explanation from the courts, or from anyone for that matter. Is it better for a child to be in the hands of strangers, or be in the hands of a biological family who wants to love and care for it?
Unfortunately I have been forced to accept that I may never get to meet my son or daughter for reasons I may never understand. My only hope is that one day I can protect other unmarried fathers to have the option to be a part of their child’s life. With public awareness I hope to gain attention to my situation in order to change the laws that do not even provide the option for a father to step up perform his duties when a mother chooses adoption. It is my hope that even if I lose my fight that I will be able to find my child later in life and show him or her that I loved them and I did everything I could to give them the same loving successful home I was given. I hope you all can spread the word and help fix this problem that tears so many families apart.

I invite you to please contact me so I may provide more details to my story. I am a young man who wants nothing more than to do the right thing. I only hope to spread my message to help other men and to make people aware of the inequality men face in my position.

Sincerely,

Garrett B. Joiner
gbjoiner@crimson.ua.edu
678-772-8217