PODCAST:
May 22, 2026 ~ WJR’s Director of Community Affairs and News Marie Osborne details the story of a Michigan father who had to fight against Michigan’s Safe Delivery Act to get custody of his child.
MICH. ~ Michigan’s Safe Delivery Act is designed to protect children from winding up in unsafe places, according to local attorney Neil Rockind. But the quest to claim his biological infant for one Michigan father, after the mother surrendered the child, became a fight against the adoption agency in trial court due to the legal requirements of the Act.
“When a parent comes forward in a safe delivery case asking for custody of their child, just because you have a DNA test alone doesn’t thereby grant custody,” Jennifer Swartz of the Adoption Partners of Michigan said on All Talk. “It thereby grants that individual the opportunity to have their day in court and to be heard by the judge, but the judge then has to decide, ‘Who is this person? We don’t know who this person is and what is in the best interest of this child.'”
While the law can serve as protection for children, it can also cause difficulties in these cases where fitness comes into question, on top of putting strain on the adoptive parents.
