Facebook and social media are being used by people who were adopted to find their biological parents, for biological parents to find the children that they gave up for adoption and for siblings to find each other. Before Facebook, you would need to register with adoption registries and then wait until the other party registered to be able to obtain the information on the person or petition the court system to unseal adoption records which is almost impossible to get accomplished.
Now, we see people connect through social media at a rapid speed. I know of a situation where a man wanted to find his biological parents his whole life. His adopted mother had helped him petition the courts twice, once when he was 19 years old and a second time when he was in his late twenties, to unseal his adoption records. The court denied him both times. When the man was 32 years old his mother suggested that he use Facebook to try to locate his biological parents. The process went extremely fast. The man posted his picture on Facebook on February 2nd with a sign best place to buy proscar online asking to find his biological parents with some information about them and his birth. It was somehow shared on his biological aunt’s page and he was contacted by his biological mother on February 9th. He asked his biological mother who his biological father was and she told him what State he lived in. The man hired a private investigator who located a telephone number for his biological father. The man called his biological father on February 14th stating that he was the baby boy he gave up for adoption.
Now, not all situations go as quickly as this example but with social media anything is possible. You can imagine what impact this could have. In this case it was a good outcome but if someone doesn’t want to be found it could have some serious impact on them and their families. This is just one example of how powerful social media can be. Social media will continue to evolve and its use will expand in the family law arena.
Dawn Kaufman
Paralegal