Complicated Family Relations

[tryst91]

Ok, here is another crazy question. On the app I am filling out, it asks to list any siblings. Easy enough right? I have one brother. But wait, legally I was adopted by my grandparents at an extremely young age. So legally I actually have 4 brothers (my brother, plus now my dad and two uncles are my brothers) In addition to this I have 3 half sisters, two from my natural mom and 1 from my adoptive dad's first marriage. That makes legally 4 brothers and 3 half sisters (plus two other brothers out there that have never been acknowledged by my natural father)... ok to me however, I really only have 1 brother. How do I get this right?

I know this is basically symantics but I am worried that it could come across as false if I put only my real brother.

[Roger Dat]

Simple fix.... CALL AND ASK :rolleyes:

[DeltaV]

So legally I actually have 4 brothers (my brother, plus now my dad and two uncles are my brothers)

Your dad and your uncles are your brothers??? If that's not a case for Jerry Springer, I don't know what is.

[Wanabe]

yea i was thinking that same thing lol.... anyway best solution is to call and verify what you should do.

[Creeker]

Do you happen to be your own Grandpa?

There's a song.... for you young'uns... :cool:

[tryst91]

Yeah, imagine trying to explain to your teachers in grade school (when doing a family tree) that you are your oldest brothers youngest son.... that is just jacked up. Luckily I can honestly say there is absolutely no incest involved. They joys of being adopted by your grandparents!

Thanks for the advice though, I really appreciate it. Testing where I want to get on is not opened yet, but I am trying to get all of my information together early. When it opens, I will give them a call and find out what I need to do for them.

[DeltaV]

Okay.

You were ADOPTED by your grandparents. They are your grandparents. They are your legal guardians. They are NOT your parents.

Your biological father is your father. He is NOT your brother. Your father's brother is your uncle. He is NOT your brother.

If you try to tell a police department that your father and uncle are also your brothers, they will think you're either crazy or stupid. Either way, the background investigator would probably take the application and pass it around the department and make a funny Jerry Springer joke about what you wrote. After everyone had a nice chuckle, your application would then be put in the trash can because you can't figure out that it's not possible for your father to also be your brother.

[Creeker]

Here's the best one:

[tryst91]

DeltaV,

Thanks for the clarification. I suppose since I was adopted at such a young age and my grandparents have always been Mom and Dad to me, (got there name and everything) it is just weird to refer to them as my grandparents.

I don't have any contact with my mom, though I know where she is and how to get ahold of her if I ever needed to and my real dad is an unreliable source and would only support my goal of being in law enforcement under the false assumption that I would get him out of tickets or something.

Neither of these two individuals, I believe, would be a good reference to contact.

(one of the reasons my brother and I were taken away and given to our grandparents was basically child neglect)

[noelchabanel]

This is probably just the sort of thing they have in mind when they ask you to add additional pages if you have any unusual circumstances that you couldn't explain clearly in the space provided.

[retdetsgt]

Believe it or not, your situation isn't that uncommon. My wife works for the state doing adoption assistance. A good many of her cases are identical to yours where grandparents adopted the grandchildren and raised them. As others said, you might type up an explanation of the circumstances and attach it to the application. It won't be a shock to anyone.

Your are extremely lucky to have grandparents willing to take you on as their child. I'd sure had to be raising kids at my age.

[Creeker]

My Mother-in-law has an ....err... "adopted" sister, who is no official relation, she was just a kid whose parents died back in the late 40's and the (NYC) neighborhood Insurance Agent asked my MIL's parents to take her in, since they were fairly well off at the time.

Her parents raised the girl along with their own kids.

By todays standards, that... along with leaving your kids sleep in a locked car...would be some type of criminal offense...