Court Hearing

We had our court hearing/trial on Friday. It was an extremely long, stressful, anxious, and emotional day. We, meaning Shane, me, and Amber, got to the court house early and we had to wait for quite awhile to go into the courtroom because there were lots of people on the docket. We didn't actually get into the courtroom until about 10:30 or 11am. The main issue at stake and discussed was is Aedyn an "indian child" according to the description of the ICWA. After 16 months the tribe still did not make Aedyn or Hugh a member, which by law then states that Aedyn is not an indian child. Everything is very technical about this subject. Our lawyer feels good about everything that we have presented. The final result at the end of the day is our lawyer gave a verbal closing statement, and the tribes lawyer wanted to give written closing statement. The judge gave him 2 weeks to complete and file it by February 17th, which then our lawyer has two weeks to write a written rebuttal and file it by March 2. On March 3 our case will then be considered submitted and the judge may formally make a decision of which she can take 90 days to make.
We did have a glimpse of hope that the tribe may be willing to settle and allow the adoption to go forth with a post adoption agreement for visitation with the tribe. We are willing to explore this option so that it may guarantee that Aedyn will be our son forever.