Trial rescheduled again then again

By the end of Friday, I heard back from CD's law guardian.  The trial was a no go.  The judge had run out of time.  "But I have good news," the guardian told me over the phone.  The trial was rescheduled for Monday.  The judge even decided to cancel a few vacation days to ensure that trials like ours were completed before his vacation.

Monday afternoon came and went and I didn't hear from anyone.  I left the law guardian a voicemail asking her to return my call so I could hear how the trial went.

At 5:30 yesterday, we were visited by our last case manager's supervisor as I had finally gotten him on the phone on Friday and ingratiated myself to the point that he wanted to come out to visit himself, make himself point person on our case, at least until we are assigned a new case manager.

His news for us?  Trial didn't happen yesterday either.  In order to have a new trial, the defendants need to be served by hand.  Meaning, they need to hand deliver subpoenas to the biological parents to tell them of a new trial date.  The parents, of course, were not in court on Friday so they couldn't know it was rescheduled.  So now they have to be served at their last known addresses where we know they aren't.  Great system, right?

Did they not know on Friday that they would not be able to serve subpoenas for a Monday trial??

So, the trial is now rescheduled for January 2, 2013.  At least I hope it is 2013.  I am finding that you can never know with these things.

The supervisor however, was a beacon of knowledge and I am not accustomed to having people around who actually know how this thing works post TPR.  In addition to telling me that we will have a new judge post TPR he was able to show me the beginnings of CD's adoption packet which included a draft of this "part B" paper, a document that informs us of what the System knows about CD's family of origin that we were not privy to before.

It was both scary and reaffirming when I read about CD's mother's background and the conclusions of her psychological evaluation as they were essentially an exact match to my educated guesses.  I got some hate mail when I posted my thoughts about what was going on with CD's mother a long time ago on this blog.  But I was right. About everything.  I wasn't looking to put her down in any way.  I had been looking to understand her.  Apparently I did understand her.

Meanwhile, it is difficult to be all that upset about court delays with the mass murder in Newtown, CT having happened just last Friday.  CD isn't going anywhere.  This adoption will happen.  Newtown puts that very well in perspective.

Oh, for a last note, the law guardian called me this morning.  Apparently she is leaving on maternity leave as of this Thursday.  I didn't even know that she was pregnant.  She won't be at CD's trial and won't be returning to work until after CD is probably adopted.  Sigh. . .I congratulated her on the baby, thanked her for her work, wished her well and took the number of her supervisor who will be taking over the case.  Our seventh case manager, second judge and third law guardian since July 2010.  It could be a lot worse.