Miss Interpret works in Estonia.

OK Peanuts! Here is the latest, with even a little breaking news as of a couple hours ago. So none of you have to be the last-person-who-hears-everything!

Where do I begin...

Who spends their spare time reading through the HAGUE CONVENTION ON THE PROTECTION OF CHILDREN AND CO-OPERATION IN RESPECT OF INTERCOUNTRY ADOPTION? Well, Jason sat down and read the whole thing. Guess what he found? Nothing. Well actually it was lots of pages of stuff, but nothing that requires Estonia to ask consent from Russia for the kids to be adopted. There was one tiny section that we thought might be misunderstood to make the MSA think they needed consent from Russia, but if you look at the context of two or three sentences together, it is talking about getting consent from people in Estonia, like biological parents, etc. In fact the entire convention says nothing about citizenship or consent from any other country. It always refers to children as "habitual residents" of a country, not citizens. Probably because the thing was written in the first place in order to protect children, knowing that there would be times where a child technically has citizenship of one country, but RESIDES in another. And the countries may not be friends. So to allow for these children to still have families, the convention allows for their adoption AS IS.

Yet the MSA wrote to the MOE (Russia) saying they needed their consent based on the regulations of the Hague convention. Why would they do that when 1) the Hague doesn't require it and 2) Russian's NOT EVEN A HAGUE CONVENTION COUNTRY!!!??? The only answer is that they misinterpreted the convention.

So we sent all of our research to Diana (about 4 pages worth) of excerpts from the convention, proving that the adoption is allowed under it. Diana called me and said she completely agreed, that the research we did was totally solid, and she forwarded it to Kersti (at the MSA) for a response.

A week later (after noise from us still, don't worry!) Kersti wrote back to Diana saying basically that the MSA legal department was looking into it and said that they aren't sure if the adoption should be processed under the Hague or under this other bilateral agreement between Estonia and Russia. They believe that this other agreement has more authority than the Hague. So I guess that means that they agree that the Hague allows the adoption, but that this bilateral agreement requires consent from Russia to adopt their citizens through Estonia.

In the meantime, we were witnesses of at least two other examples of the MSA grossly misapplying articles in the Hague convention. So why wouldn't they also be misunderstanding this other bilateral agreement? On top of that, why would ANYTHING supersede the Hague convention, when its sole purpose is to regulate international adoption and prevent countries from allowing things that the convention forbids? At the very least, the two international treaties would have equal weight in Estonia, since they signed them both. The bilateral would not have more authority than the Hague. But only one should apply to this, if they contradict, right? And if this bilateral agreement was so much more important than the Hague convention, why wasn't THAT the authority cited in the letter to the MOE instead of the Hague?

The research continued. We started contacting attorneys in Estonia. (Note: we have been told lots of times (not by Diana) that when dealing with Estonia that the best thing to do is to keep quiet and not ask questions. Obviously that doesn't work for us, so a small amount of aggression is now required.)

During this research we've talked directly to several attorneys, more than one person at the DOS in Washington regarding the Hague vs. the bilateral agreement, and other people. We've also used Kathy (who I'm sure you all are familiar with as one of the loudest peanuts on the comments section! Thanks Kathy! ;) ) as a human version of a Google search bar to help us research certain things on the internet.

We finally found out during our research what this bilateral agreement was called and got a hold of it. The Estonian to English translation is terrible and very hard to understand. There are two things interesting about it though. One is that the internet says it was terminated in 2005. So is it even still in force? We can't get an answer to that one yet. The other thing is that it seems (in reading the bad translation over and over) that in the adoption sections, that it only applies to domestic adoption within Estonia or Russia, not international where the kids are going outside Estonia or Russia. But what do I know?

So this morning we got an email from another attorney. Some attorneys write and say basically "We'd be glad to help, this is how you send us money." Others write and give their opinion right away. This is what this one said:
"The constitution of Estonia states that if laws or other legislation of Estonia are in conflict with international treaties ratified by the Estonian parliament, then the provisions of the international treaty shall apply.

However, the text of the bilateral agreement with Russia refers to a situation where the child is the citizen of one of the parties to the agreement (Estonia or Russia) and the adopter is the citizen of the other party (correspondingly Russia or Estonia). In the present case (as I understand) the adopters are citizens of a third party country."

I called this attorney right away to clarify that this means that in our adoption, the Hague convention would apply to us, and the bilateral would not. Reason being that the kids are not being adopted to Estonian citizens, so this is an international matter not covered by the bilateral and would therefore fall under the HAGUE!!!

One other note on top of that... The bilateral doesn't say they need consent from the other country. It says that if their family law requires it, then they need consent. Who knows if Russia's family law even requires it?

So the bottom line is that there is plenty of evidence that the Estonians can, should, and are protected by the Hague enough to allow this adoption, and that the Russians won't come blow them up for it.

Now do you see why I've had no time to write? Between reading two international treaties in three languages and talking to attorneys who speak five languages, and proving a government authority wrong, I'm swamped!

I'll keep you posted on their responses. Might take awhile. They "look into things" usually for at least several days. The good news is that there have been other times where Estonia insisted on something and then suddenly changed their mind when they got new information. We shall seeeeee....

Love,
Molly

PS- Katya and Roman's spirits are more up lately. Anna Valentina says that they carry pictures around of us to show to people, and that other kids are envious of their great parents. LOL We all want to be together so badly. Soon, we hope.