Regional News
Neb. couple who waged legal fight to adopt give up
Published Wednesday, January 14, 2009 at 04:59 PM
By JOSH FUNK Associated Press Writer

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) -- A northeast Nebraska couple who went to the state Supreme Court to fight for the chance to adopt a boy have given up custody of him.

Last Thursday, the Nebraska Children's Home Society returned the boy to the home of Jason and Angela Vesely in Verdigre, where the boy spent the first three months of his life.

But the Veselys decided it would be in the boy's best interest for him to grow up with his maternal grandparents in Sutherland, where he had been living for 11 months during the court fight. So the boy was returned to Sutherland on Tuesday.

"It was a real happy day yesterday for the Morgans," the biological family's attorney, P. Stephen Potter, said Wednesday.

Potter said the Morgans reached an agreement with the Veselys to drop all their pending litigation in Lincoln and McPherson counties in exchange for physical custody of the boy.

One of the Veselys' lawyers, Kelly Tollefsen, said the custody decision was made "in the best interests of the child," but otherwise Tollefsen would say only that the Veselys agreed with the three-paragraph statement the adoptive agency issued and wanted privacy.

The high court ruled in November that the boy should be allowed to live with the Veselys.

The Veselys had to give up the child in February because a Knox County district judge ruled the couple should have told the Nebraska Children's Home Society that Angela was pregnant.

But the high court ruled that the boy should never have been taken from the couple because nothing in the written agreement required them to disclose the pregnancy.

The Veselys applied to adopt in 2005, and Jason Vesely has said his wife was more than four months pregnant when the agency assigned the child to them in late 2007.

The birth mother, Megan Lynn Morgan of Sutherland, had requested the boy be placed in a family where he would be an only child and that she wanted an open adoption.

The Veselys had said they planned to tell Morgan that Angela was pregnant, but they were waiting because she had miscarried three times previously.

The boy lived with the Veselys from the time he was 4 days old until the Knox County judge ordered him removed in February at the age of 3 months. He was then placed with his maternal grandparents.

Barring any surprises, this placement should be the boy's last, so he will be known as Brett Jonathan Morgan. The name the Veselys used, Morgan Jason Vesely, will live only in court records.

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