The May 22, 2017 issue of The New Yorker contained a lengthy article concerning one of the most complicated adoption and custody cases this writer has read about. The article, “Are You My Mother?” by Staff Writer Ian Parker, concerns the case of Circe Hamilton, her former partner, Kelly Gunn, to whom she was never married, and Abush, the son Circe adopted from Ethiopia in August 2011 when he was a toddler. This was a year and a half after Hamilton and Gunn had broken up, although they were still close friends at the time of the adoption.

Abush was available for adoption because his father had left his mother, who could not support him on her own and had placed him in an orphanage. Of course, he was not really an orphan. During the relationship between Hamilton and Gunn, they had discussed adopting a child from Nepal or Ethiopia, in the belief that a foreign adoption would be “more predictable, and less fraught, than a domestic one,” possibly meaning the birth family would not be around. Apparently, no thought was given to why these foreign children were available, no thought that parents would only relinquish a child out of desperation, not just to give him/her better opportunities, or because they just didn’t care.

The couple had met in 2004, and they moved in together in 2007. Gunn asked Hamilton to marry her, but that was before same-sex marriage was legal in New York State. Gunn had bought two diamond rings and gave one to Hamilton, who says she did not think of it as marriage or even a proposal. Hamilton wanted to adopt a child and Gunn says she went along, because “Circe needed this so badly. I had a big identity, a big job. And, without getting too binary, I wanted this for my partner, you know.”

In the fall of 2007, they went to an event for prospective adoptive parents and shortly afterward, began the lengthy application process. Knowing that countries allowing foreign adoptions would not welcome an application from a same-sex couple, Hamilton presented herself as straight and unmarried. She was unmarried, true, but she did invent a boyfriend for purposes of the adoption procedure. Gunn claims Hamilton is homophobic—“she doesn’t have many gay friends.” Aside from the oddness of that remark, the fact is, they were partners at the time. The application procedure continued, during which Hamilton and Gunn broke up. At no time did they seriously consider legal marriage. They did discuss Gunn doing a second-parent adoption once Hamilton’s adoption was final and the child was in her custody. She was included in the adoption paperwork as a roommate, not a partner or spouse, although background checks, financial and medical reports, and apartment inspection (of Hamilton’s apartment) were part of the procedure. Gunn later told the reporter that Hamilton forgot she was enacting a fiction.

Sometime during that year, the romantic relationship ended. Gunn voiced concern about the responsibilities of parenthood and possible “psychological difficulties that an adopted child might have.” She also liked the idea of the comfortable life she had built, including a summer house on Fire Island. Hamilton recalled her saying, “I just want to be drinking cocktails by the pool.” That hardly sounds like a woman who is eager to become a parent. She also rekindled a relationship with a former girlfriend. So, they broke up in 2009, although Gunn claimed it was only a “moment of crisis.” She claims they were still a family, although no longer sexual partners. Gunn says Hamilton was still living with her, only renting apartments “for lovers.” She was still an employee at Gunn’s firm. She also had a career as a photographer. Both were making quite a lot of money. When Hamilton finally adopted Abush, she brought him to New York, where he lived with her, not Gunn, although Gunn did become his godmother. Nothing in the article discusses what their concept was of “godmother,” which is generally a religious term, never a legal one. At times, Abush stayed overnight with Gunn, and they did become close; he called her “Ree.” She had his name tattooed on her arm in Ethiopian script, along with paw prints to represent her deceased Chihuahua.

Ultimately, Hamilton decided she wanted to move back to England, where she had grown up. Although a U.S. citizen and descendant of Alexander Hamilton, she sounds English and has a British passport; she had decided she wanted her son to grow up in a less hectic place than New York City. On August 30, 2016, three days before Hamilton and Abush were to fly to London, her friends had a farewell dinner for her. Gunn had asked that Abush stay over with her one last night while Hamilton was packing. The next day, the shipping company came for Hamilton’s belongings. She did her final photo shoot, expecting to pick up her son at Gunn’s house, when she got a call from a woman who said she was a “family and matrimonial lawyer” named Nancy Chemtob, representing Gunn, to prevent her from taking Abush to England. Stunned, she was told that Gunn had just asked a New York court to recognize her as one of Abush’s parents and award her joint legal and physical custody. In the meantime, she was seeking a restraining order to keep Hamilton from taking him out of the U.S. Chemtob told her she was to appear before a matrimonial judge at 2:30 p.m. that day, and bring Abush’s American and British passports. Shaking, she called the friend who had given the farewell party for her, and asked her to recommend lawyers. One of them spoke to a family law specialist, who said that Hamilton should “get the hell out of there,” that she was walking into an ambush if she didn’t have legal representation. Hamilton went to the court, however, because she felt she had to, and Gunn had her son at that moment.

Chemtob told the judge that Gunn was in a “co-parenting relationship where the child one hundred per cent believes, and knows, that he has two mothers.” Well, he did, but one of those was his birth mother in Ethiopia. No mention was ever made of that, even in the article. Chemtob claimed Gunn and Hamilton had raised Abush “as both parents equally.” Hamilton was a “flight risk,” and Gunn had become “very concerned about the welfare of the child.” The judge asked Hamilton to speak. She said, “I have no idea why I was brought into the courtroom. I am the sole parent.” The judge allowed Gunn’s petition to progress and Hamilton surrendered Abush s passports. She canceled her flight, re-enrolled Abush in school, and hired a lawyer.

The case began the next week and continued into 2017. As the e-mails and court proceedings went on, they called into question what counts as family, who is a real parent, and even whether the ability to pay for good dentistry should constitute a claim to being a legal parent rather than a godmother. This last seems really silly. Chemtob told the court, “I don’t think she (Hamilton) does everything she can for the child. I’m not saying he needs a driver, but he definitely needs braces.” “The child” was six years old, far too young for braces! In 2006, the Court of Appeals in New York bad declared that a de facto father (not a legal or biological father but one who had behaved as a father and who was thought by the child to be his father), could not evade paying child support by proving he wasn’t the biological father. As it happened, on August 30, 2016, the very day Hamilton dropped Abush off to see Gunn, the Court of Appeals delivered a decision in a case where a lesbian couple had broken up and the biological mother refused access to the child they had been raising together. The court ruled in the second woman’s favor. Chemtob, already hired by Gunn, called her and told her, and she filed her petition in the court. Had she filed two days earlier, it would have been thrown out immediately.

Hamilton’s lawyer, Bonnie Rabin, acknowledged that, when Hamilton and Gunn were a couple, they had made a “joint plan” to adopt, but that, when they separated, that plan was terminated and Hamilton adopted as a single parent. When Gunn took the stand, she declared that Abush was her son. Rabin objected. The judge understood that, if Gunn won the case, it could set a legal precedent that anyone involved in a single parent’s life, include neighbors, babysitters, flings, etc., could go to court and claim to be a de facto parent. Gunn’s supporters would see it as the court having restrained a woman who “had attempted to put an ocean between a small boy and one of his mothers.”

Chemtob told Parker that she took the case because an acquaintance, Jane Aronson, a pediatrician who calls herself the Orphan Doctor, had contacted her. Hamilton and Gunn had met Aronson at about the time they decided to adopt. Aronson also knew Angelina Jolie, and had done medical evaluations from afar of children being considered for adoption in America. When Aronson was separated from her civil partner, a woman with whom she had adopted two sons, Chemtob helped her get joint custody.

In August of 2016, Aronson and Gunn were sitting in a park outside the Stonewall Inn and called Chemtob to see if she would take the case for Gunn. Chemtob told Parker, “She sounded like a nut job.” Yet, she took the case and pursued it with a vengeance.

Aronson would appear to be unethical as a doctor, and as an “adoption consultant,” as she had billed herself when Hamilton and Gunn met her. Gunn portrayed herself in court as a mother interested in raising Abush to be active in sports, as she had been when she was young. Aronson, it turned out, had given Gunn Chemtob’s number four years previously, when Hamilton and Gunn had settled on the term “godmother” to describe Gunn’s role in Abush’s life. In court, Gunn later described that as giving her the right to a restraining order. Hamilton recalled that Gunn never took him on vacation or went to parent-teacher conferences, but did sometimes pick him up from school or have him overnight, but that then Gunn bought an apartment in Los Angeles, where she and another woman lived and were briefly engaged.

Gunn maintained that, when she was involved, it was co-parenting, and when she was not, it was because Hamilton wouldn’t allow it. Hamilton says that, as Gunn shut down her company and became more obsessive about wanting time with both Abush and her, she wanted to know who Hamilton was dating, and began to give Abush more and more gifts and clothes and toys, over Hamilton’s objections. Gunn insisted she had always been the major financial provider for both Abush and Hamilton. She had, in fact, paid Hamilton $350,000 in the past to get her name off the deeds of the apartment and the Fire Island house they had owned together. Hamilton sublet her apartment in March 2016 and moved to a friend’s West Village carriage house, which Chemtob characterized as “being close to vagrancy,” because the friend did not charge her rent.

In summer 2015, Hamilton and Abush went to England for six weeks and looked at schools (the child is six years old!), and Gunn came for a week, declaring, “I’m here to buy property in England. If you move back, I will come, too.” She changed her Facebook page to show her living in London. She told Parker, “I think it makes Circe crazy that she has to consider somebody else—and I’m pretty pliable. I allow her a lot of autonomy with Abush.” One must remember that Circe Hamilton is the legal parent, not Kelly Gunn, so why does she think she has any right to “allow” anything?

Hamilton was denied the right to take Abush to England for Christmas. Gunn held a seventh birthday party for Abush and posted photos on Instagram. Chemtob talked in court of “the best interests of the child,”mentioning Gunn’s financial advantages over Hamilton. Rabin tried to get a motion to dismiss Gunn’s case, but the judge, Judge Nervo, seemed to side with Gunn. Chemtob told Rabin to throw in the towel. She replied that she didn’t have a towel. The judge dismissed Gunn’s petition in January 2017, but Chemtob and Gunn appealed and got an interim stay. The appeal will take months, and in the meantime, Hamilton and Abush are stuck in New York, with Abush’s passports still held by the court and Gunn still having twice-weekly visits. Gunn says of Judge Nervo, “This guy doesn’t get to tell me I’m not Abush’s parent.” That seems very presumptive, considering he is the judge, and she has no legal standing as a parent. The child keeps asking Hamilton why they didn’t move, and why he didn’t get to go to England for Christmas.

In this whole sordid mess, the child seems to be a pawn between Hamilton and Gunn, and it does seem that, at times, Gunn declared she didn’t want the responsibility of a child, yet at other times wants him all to herself, and at still other times, in the past, Hamilton had declared Gunn was “like a parent” or “like a member of the family.” Yet, nowhere is there any recognition of the plight of Abush’s birth mother. Hamilton did take Abush back to Africa to see his birth family in 2015. Gunn said she wanted to go, too, but Hamilton vetoed it.

Looking at it from a birth parent’s view, this writer wonders why no one ever questioned the wisdom or morality of taking a child from his home country and his birth family, simply because his mother could not afford to raise him. Are children, particularly children of color, not much more than pets? Would everyone have been better off if Hamilton and Gunn had decided to sponsor Abush and his family, or even help the orphanage where he had unfortunately been placed? Should Dr. Aronson be investigated for doing “medical evaluations” of children she’s never seen? Should she also be advocating for wealthy white Americans wanting to adopt these children? Should the court have acknowledged the ethical issues here? One wonders what the final legal outcome of this case will be, but also what happens to Abush as he grows up surrounded by all of this? Adoption may have been a dream for Circe Hamilton, and a sometimes-wish for Kelly Gunn, but it was never a dream for Abush, nor for his birth mother.