Tag Archives: Jeffrey Duncan

After 80 days, Michigan finally releases my original birth certificate

The Michigan health and public health agency, the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS), took 80 days to release two copies of my original birth certificate after getting my order for rush service on August 16, 2024.

The two copies of the true record of my birth, and my biological kin relations provided in this critical vital record that is a human right of all persons, finally landed in my mailbox on November 4, 2024. The process, as it occurred with denials and delays, violated not one but two court orders requiring MDHHS to release my vital record, as required by state law law.

I had to get a state court to intervene. (Note, I already had a standing court order from 2016 when I first won my legal fight for my vital record.)

See my video highlighting this clearly wrongful and unlawful delay.

Even though I secured a second court order on September 19, 2024, to compel this mostly hostile agency to thousands of Michigan-born adoptees to release my original birth record, that second court order was also denied.

A section of the latest court order requiring MDHHS to release two copies of Rudy Owens’ original birth certificate

MDHHS received that second court order on October 4, 2024 (I have a legal record confirming its delivery) and then sent a denial by letter on October 7, 2024.

In MDHHS’s signed letter, which did not provide any statutory reference—because there was no law allowing this—State Registrar Jeffrey D. Duncan noted, in all capital letters, “YOU MUST HAVE A CURRENT ORDER TO GET SEALED RECORDS.” (Note, this is false, and no such statutory provision in any law exists.)

As I shared already in my update and video published in mid-August 2024, there are several relevant Michigan statutes that set out adoption laws relevant to issues facing adoptees of my generation: § 710, 333, 368.

None establishes any conditions to deny the release of more than one original birth certificate to a Michigan-born such as myself who provided a court order already.

In fact, the statute § 333.2882 does state, the original birth certificate is accessible “upon a court order.” I met this condition with the court order already sent to MDHHS in June 2016, forcing it to send me a copy of my original birth certificate. I re-sent MDHHS on August 13, 2024, what I sent earlier in June 2016, and a copy of my vital record it sent me in July 2016 to prove it has already released the record before.

It’s important to highlight for lawmakers, the media, and any group that advocates for state agency compliance of state laws the harm and insanity of what denied and delayed justice means to myself and to tens of thousands of adoptees who may never even find their kin or get their original vital records.

I met my birth kin and my mother had sent in a signed consent form to release my birth certificate in April 1989—that was more than 35 years ago!

The court sided with me in late June 2016 to compel MDHSS to unseal my original birth certificate 27 years after I found my birth parents. I’m not a secret, but I continue to be treated like a bastard who is not a person protected by state law and the state constitution.

Lastly, throughout this entire process of obtaining what is mine as a human and legal right, my original birth certificate, the only government office that ever did anything to provide fair and balanced basic service involving what is ultimately a matter of law was the Third Circuit Court in Detroit and the personnel who worked there.

The state of Michigan intentionally chooses to be an adversary to a group denied basic legal rights bestowed on millions of other Michiganders, and its personnel all the way to its senior leadership, Director Elizabeth Hertel, appears committed to harming those who were severed from their biological families by the inequitable system of adoption for decades.

Multiple generations of people in Michigan have now suffered because of this, and no one seems to care about solving the problem outside some courageous lawmakers who unsuccessfully tried do that that in fall 2023 and winter 2024.

See my other stories and videos documenting my lawful request for my original birth certificate, and the delays and denials by MDHHS:

 

Michigan Department of Health and Human Services ignores two court orders to release adoptee’s original birth record

The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS) and its Vital Records office is illegally denying an adult adoptee (me) two extra copies of their original birth record after the agency received a court order on Oct. 4, 2024 to release two copies.

See my video that I published the day I received this denial by mail on October 15, 2024.

MDHHS has a long and very well-documented record of treating Michigan-born adoptees unprofessionally, and in my case, outside of the boundaries allowed by law. This fits a pattern I have experienced for years. I dealt with similar efforts to withhold my legal vital record in 2016.

MDHHS denial letter in violation of state law sent to Rudy Owens on October 7, 2024

The denial letter is signed by State Registrar Jeffrey Duncan. It is also dated October 7, 2024, three days after the agency received my latest court order from the Third Circuit Court of Detroit ordering this agency to release two copies of my original birth certificate that it was also compelled to release already by a separate court order order received by MDHHS in June 2016.

The second court order was not legally required by law–repeat, not required by law. The letter did not cite a statute because no such statute exists for this action. So as of October 4, 2024, it possesses two standing and lawful courts orders now to release two copies of my original birth record. It received all my required documents on August 16, 2024 (I have legal proof of that) and even cashed my check paying for my two records (I have that cashed check too, August 20, 2024).

A section of the latest court order requiring MDHHS to release two copies of Rudy Owens’ original birth certificate

They have my request, my money, extensive records proving my identify, my birth mother’s consent form to release my records from April 1989, and two court orders compelling them to obey the law.

Withholding my extra copies of my original birth record–I already have an original copy I obtained in July 2016–is an attempt to avoid their lawfully prescribed duties. This should be of concern to the media, the Michigan Attorney General, and thousands of adoptees already treated without any basic courtesy by MDHHS staff. I will be providing updates later.

I’ve alerted the media, adoptee rights organizations, and state lawmakers. Also, I have never forgotten who I am and always will be: the “Bastard from Detroit.”

One of the state’s most powerful state bureaucracies continues to act like I am deserving of being treated as a non-human, which historically is how bastards like me have been abused and harmed for centuries in the USA and in countless societies globally. Today’s harm is systemic denial of legal equality, and in Michigan and MDHHS’s case, failure to obey the law.

See my first video that I posted when I filed by request for two extra copies of my original birth certificate and my video made after I filed a request for a redundant court order that is not required by law for MDHHS to release my vital record it must do by law already. I posted this video the day I filed my request that was just illegally denied by MDHHS on October 7, 2024.