Tag Archives: MDHHS

Update to FAQs for Michigan adoptees seeking court orders for original birth records

I have updated my frequently visited “FAQS for court order requests in Michigan for original birth certificates” webpage.* I created this in 2018 for all Michigan-born adoptees and adoptee rights advocates, lawmakers, policymakers, and the media, explaining the process for securing an original birth certificate for adoptees, especially those born between 1945 and 1980. I hope these resources are helpful and provide information that the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS) will not share with tens of thousands of adoptees, as part of their concerted efforts to discriminate against this class of thousands of persons who were separated from their birth mothers and kin by this inequitable system.

In addition to updating links to MDHHS’s intentionally unhelpful web resources for adoptees, I added this:

Will MDHHS ignore court orders to release an adoptee’s original birth certificate? [UPDATED NOV. 15, 2024]: Yes, MDHHS will ignore state law and will ignore court orders, based on my experiences requesting two additional copies of my original birth certificate in mid-August 2024. In my case, MDHHS took 80 days to release two copies of my original birth certificate after getting my order for rush service on Aug. 16, 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. I had to get a state court to intervene after I received a denial letter. The two birth certificates arrived on Nov. 4, 2024. (Note, I already had a standing court order from 2016 when I first won my legal fight for my vital record.) See my essay, video, and links to four other stories and videos documenting MDHHS’s actions that did not comply with state law and defied a Michigan state court and judge.

*Note, I have never made a penny from providing this resource to the public, outside of the incredibly modest sales I have of my book documenting the history of the U.S. adoption with a public health lens and how my story being separated from my biological family helps explain that system and the legal discrimination rooted in law harming millions of adoptees to this day.

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.

Filing second request for my original birth certificate being illegally withheld by Michigan

On September 30, 2024, I submitted an additional and completely redundant court order compelling the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS) Vital Records office to release two copies of my original birth certificate.

The public health officials at Vital Records already were required by state law to release these records by a court order they received in 2016. Instead, the agency chose to flagrantly disobey the law. The two copies I requested were not released, as required by state law. The agency cashed my check and then coordinated a strategy with a Michigan court how to force an adoptee to take steps that are not prescribed by law. This has been a practice, according to a court official I spoke to anonymously, for two decades—and this is illegal.

I then requested and then received in late September 2024 the necessary court order from the 3^rd Circuit Court of Michigan, in Detroit, ordering MDHHS to surrender the two original birth certificates I requested. This court order already was in the agency’s files.

I mailed in that order with a letter reminding MDHHS it had received my request for my records in mid-August six weeks earlier and was failing to adhere to the law.

This has happened to other adoptees in other states, where public health bureaucrats violate law and harm adoptees intentionally, often without any consequences and certainly no investigation of willful wrongdoing in managing critical vital records of a person’s original identity—the single most important vital record of all persons.

I am now waiting for my two original birth certificate copies.

This is the third video in my series documenting the state’s handling of vital records requests by adult adoptees, specifically those who have already secured a legal court order forcing the state to release a copy of an adoptee’s original birth certificate without any barrier such as requests for additional court orders for duplicate copies. I will post another video update on how Vital Records complies, finally, or continues to remain in violation of state managing vital records.

Will Michigan comply with state law and release additional copies of an adoptee’s original birth certificate?

On August 13, 2024, I submitted a request to the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS), with a $62 check, to obtain duplicate copies of my original birth record.

I had to wait 27 years for the vital record to be provided to me in July 2016, after I had provided a signed consent form by my birth mother to release my vital records in 1989. The state and MDHHS only released it after a protracted legal battle that ended with a circuit court in Detroit ordering the state to release my original record of birth.

I am very aware of how this historically anti-adoptee state public health and health agency will likely respond to me as an adoptee. I am simply requesting records provided to all persons but adoptees as a matter of courteous government service with minimal state fees. But I expect this will not be courteous or in compliance with statute. MDHHS has a record of hostile behavior to Michigan-born adoptees, which I have documented now for years.

So I am documenting the process by video and other means to provide a public record of my activity. My goal is to highlight issues of denied legal rights to all adoptees and the discriminatory treatment millions of them face through basic civil processes that should be fulfilled as a basic government service: providing a vital record.

MDHHS provides no public information stating only one copy of a record can be released.
• www.michigan.gov/mdhhs/faq/adoption/can-the-adult-adoptee-obtain-a-copy-of-the-original-birth-certificate
• www.michigan.gov/mdhhs/adult-child-serv/adoption/adoption-faqs

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 someone such as myself who provided a court order already. In fact, the statute states here, § 333.2882 does simply state, the original birth certificate is accessible “upon a court order.” I met this condition with the 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.

I have already learned from one of my trusted public contacts familiar with state adoption processes that I can expect MDHHS to reject my request, even though there is no law that would allow that.

I will provide additional videos later to document the outcome of what could be another useless fight that only signals that adoptees remain second-class humans subjected to decades-long legal discrimination entirely because of their adoptee status.

See my website for more details about Michigan’s nearly impossible barriers for adoptees to access their original vital records.