Guardianship progress

As you can see by the thermometer on the right, I am currently at 96% of my total budget raised (still need about $3000 for the next two years)
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October 31, 2012

So, while everyone in America was doing last minute fixes on their kids’ costumes to prep them for trick-or-treating, I was stressing out about going up to Mae Fah Luang yet again. This time, we were going to finally move Sophie officially to Chiang Mai for study. I thought that we were also going to inquire again about getting her birth certificate, but that didn’t end up happening, as I later found out.

Anyway, in preparation for this, we met with our lawyer, with whom I was becoming more and more disillusioned, the more I talked to people he had basically screwed over. But, at this point, we were days away from filing our case, so it was a bit late to fire him and find someone new. He said he would drive his car and we could just pay him for the cost of the car maintenance and gas, about 5000 baht ($175). Two weeks ago, we rented a car for two days, drove all over the country and paid for a hotel room and travel costs for 3 additional people and it only cost 6000 baht, so I was a bit skeptical about the high price. However, I didn’t have much room to argue, since he said he would normally charge 7500 baht just for a fee to travel that far. Frustrating, but I felt like I was boxed into a corner. After all, we NEEDED him to come with us and speak to the family who now lives on Sophie’s land, and speak to the poo yai baan (village chief) from Mae Fah Luang.

Despite having this case for a year, our lawyer still does not believe that Sophie’s entire family is dead. I thought he may finally believe us if someone ELSE tells him that they are all dead. All of a sudden at this meeting, he started saying that if we couldn’t find a living relative to sign for us, then I couldn’t get legal guardianship, but I could get cleared to adopt her. ????? How is guardianship harder than adoption? She can’t be the first kid in the history of the country to have no living relatives and need to be adopted by someone. Not to mention the fact that for the past year, he has been saying she can’t be adopted since she is not a citizen and that she is too old to be adopted in Thailand. This is why I have lost all faith in this lawyer because every day, his story changes to be a complete contradiction from the previous day.

The plan was to meet at the office at 5 am and head up to MFL and back in the same day. We had arranged with the family and the chief to meet us at the government office, so they were planning to be there too. We got up to the office about 9am, and there were only 3 people ahead of us in line to finish Sophie’s address change. I thought that while we did that, the lawyer was speaking to the other office about her birth certificate, but I guess I should have been more specific and told him to go ask, instead of just asking what he found out. He just told me the same thing they said the last time we went up, which I found out later was totally a lie. (More on that to come).

OK, so we went to the first desk, he looked over the papers, and sent us to take yet more pictures because the last batch did not have Sophie in her school uniform. After that was done, we waited for him to type up the papers. The guy called us in when the papers were printed, but not yet officially signed, and I saw that my name was spelled incorrectly.

I didn’t realize until that moment that they were actually not only giving her permission to study in Chiang Mai, but specifically naming me and our house as her legal guardian and residence. However, I thought my name should be spelled correctly. So, we went back to wait again.

While we were waiting, the family and the chief showed up and the lawyer talked to them. On the drive up, he had asked Sophie over and over and over and over again “are you sure these people are not your family?” and she kept telling him “no, they are my mom’s friends.” Finally, after the 10^th time, she just gave up and said, “OK, yeah, they are family.” So, when they show up, and he says, “how are you related?” they are like “Uh, we’re not. We’re just friends who live on her parents’ land.” Then the lawyer is all shocked and dismayed and like “Why did Sophie say they were relatives? They aren’t relatives. They say all the relatives are dead!” To which I respond with a combination of disbelief and derision and say: “I know. This is what we have been telling you for a year. You wouldn’t believe Sophie when she told you over and over that they were not family, so she finally told you what you wanted to hear. I have been telling you the same thing for a year. Do you finally believe us now?”

After this, Sophie comes running out and grabs me to go inside, where I am plopped in front of a guy who starts asking me questions about Sophie. Like, do I yell at her (kind of lied on that one), do I hit her (I was pretty appalled by that question and responded by telling the story of how I wanted to go beat her teacher up after he beat all the kids in class until they had bruises and couldn’t sit down for 3 days), where do we live, that kind of thing. I couldn’t follow 100% of what he was saying, but the gist of it was that they sometimes have problems with foreigners wanting to take in teenagers. They will say that they want to help or adopt them, but really, they beat them, or make them house slaves, or force them to work in brothels, so he wanted to be really sure that I was treating her well. I said that was very good, and that is why I wanted to take care of her, to keep those awful things from happening. He seemed satisfied with that, and stamped our papers and sent us on our way back to desk 1. So, we waited another 20 minutes to get the final copy. Then we made a few copies and had them officially stamped as well.

Basically, this paper gives me full authority to travel with Sophie, get her out of trouble with the police (as if that would ever happen), and lets her stay with me until she finishes 9^th grade. Technically, she is still registered in Mae Fah Luang, so we need to take this paper and the accompanying check-in sheet to the Chiang Mai government office every 6 months until she is done with 9^th grade. At that point, we need to go back to mae Fah Luang to get another paper extending her stay in Chiang Mai until she finishes high school. Ideally by that point, all this will be moot because I will have adopted her and gotten her US citizenship by that point, but I am still not sure exactly how long that will all take.

At this point, it’s 11am. I think, ok, we will be back in Chiang Mai by 4pm and I can actually go to work and teach tonight. Great! However, this is the best part of the story. We head down the mountain and pull off into this random village. The lawyer tells us that he is going to leave us here to have lunch at the market and then come back and pick us up in two hours while he goes to meet with someone else. I was so confused because on the drive up, he had said we would go with him to meet these other people and it would just be a second while he gave them some documents, and then we would get back on the road. So, he leaves us in the middle of nowhere, basically, and says he will come back in 2 hours, to give us time to shop and eat. So, two hours comes and goes. Long story short, he comes back at 4:15. 4:15!!!! We got there at 11:20. I was speechless with anger at the fact that I had paid him 5000 baht for this day and he was making me miss work and just dumping us in this little town with NOTHING to do for hours. He refused to tell us where he was or how long he would be, every time I called him, he would just say “oh, just a second, we’re coming” and then hang up on me. It was infuriating!

When they finally came back to pick us up, he was all apologetic, but I was not having it. I was basically done with him at that point. I was just like “don’t talk, let’s just go.” We finally got back to Chiang Mai at 8:30pm. After that, I have been very short with him, and just not wanted to talk to him at all, because I just don’t trust him or believe a word her says anymore, which is not a good feeling to have, when we still need to go to juvenile court and then the head court of Chiang Mai and he needs to testify for us.

Thursday morning, I had a Thai lesson. I asked my teacher to help me read the paper for Sophie, so I knew what it said. She read it and said “Heather, this is wrong!” Apparently, when they typed in how long Sophie is allowed to stay with me before the paper expires does not match up. It says “this child is allowed to stay with Heather Askew for the next year and 5 months, until March 31, 2015.” Yeah, do the math. That is 2 years and 5 months, not one year. So, if anyone at the Chiang Mai government office or the court sees this, it could put the entire guardianship on hold until we can go BACK to MFL and get it fixed! Six people read this paper, and not a single one of them caught that mistake. So, not only did we waste 4 hours of time in a nameless town, we didn’t even get a correct document for our case! However, I am not freaking out too much yet, because three different offices in Chiang Mai had to approve her check-in, and not one of them commented on the inaccuracy, so hopefully nobody will notice at court either. I didn’t even tell the lawyer, for fear he would hold off on filing the case yet again.

The other incredibly frustrating thing is that, when we were in MFL with Ning on October 8, they told us we need to go pick up Sophie’s ID card (not citizenship, just a resident alien card) in Doi Saket, just outside Chiang Mai. However, after the debacle with the moving form, I asked my Thai teacher to help me find the phone number for this office so I would have everything 150% prepared before I pulled Sophie out of school yet again to go get this card.

We call them, and they are totally confused. They are like “what are you talking about? You can’t pick up a card here. We manufacture the cards in batches and send them back to the county. You have to pick it up at the county office in Mae Fah Luang.” I was so furious and confused. That lady gave us a number for her supervisor, who said the same thing. They get batches of ID info from the counties and then make the cards and send them back. They don’t have the ability to distribute them.

Next, we called the county office, where we JUST WERE YESTERDAY!! I explained to the woman who answered that we were just in MFL, they told us to go to Doi Saket, but now Doi Saket is saying to go to MFL, so I was completely at a loss as to what we were supposed to do. She asked me a bunch of questions about where Sophie was born, what village number and if she had citizenship. Then, she gave me another number to call. My Thai teacher called for me and talked to that person.

Let me back up a bit to explain. We have a copy (not an original, Sophie has no clue where that might be) of an application for her to get an ID card. It was filed in November of 2007, 5 years ago, and says that the card should be picked up at the end of January, 2008. They never went to pick up this card, so we have been carting this paper all over the place for the last year and a half trying to get info as to how to get this card that was applied for.

So, the new person says, OK, what is the application date? We tell her and she’s like “oh, no! That expired. They did a census in 2007, but those cards expired last year. They did a new census last year, but if she never picked up her card, her number may have been cancelled when they did the new survey. You need to come to the government office in MFL and ask them to create a new application and put her number back in the system if it was deleted. Then, they will send the info to Doi Saket, and send the card back to MFL and you can come pick it up.” I about fell over when I heard this. We had the opportunity to do this TWICE in the last month. So, for those of you keeping track, I have spent nearly $400 USD in a month to basically get lied to multiple times, spend hours traveling and waiting at a government office, and get nothing accomplished in the process to get Sophie an identification card.

After this phone call, I called the village chief we had met with several times over the past year, who had helped us both times at the government office. I asked him if he remembered the census last year and if he had put Sophie’s name on the list, or if her number was gone. He said he was sure her name was on the list, because he checked last year, when we went to visit him in the village in December. (See “Chiang Rai, Poo Chi Fah, and Other Funny Names for that story). FINALLY, some good news.

The day after I found all this out, our lawyer finally filed the case with the court, and we got a court date. Well, two actually. Our first is November 15, when we will go to the juvenile court and testify to our relationship, how long Sophie has been with me and why I should be allowed to be her guardian. Then, they will write a recommendation to the high court, and we will go to see them on December 12. That is a panel of 4 judges who will ask us more questions and will render a final decision. So, if all goes well, it should all be official and legal by Christmas! Great Christmas present, huh?

The next step is where it gets a bit murky. Now, the lawyer says that we can take the judgement to Bangkok, and file it with the Department of Child Welfare to legally adopt Sophie. However, I still don’t know if that is really the case. I do know that once I get the judgement, I will go to the US Consulate and find out what is the next step I can take to get her US citizenship, since she may never be able to get Thai citizenship in her life.
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