Ronald Morgan has photos of his daughter everywhere in his Ross home -- an 8-by-10 in the living room, a dozen snapshots on the refrigerator, more tucked away. He has her bike helmet and fishing rod on a dining room chair, her rag doll on a shelf in the entry.

But he doesn't have her.

	Robin Rombach, Post-Gazette
	Ronald Morgan has filed for custody of his daughter, who has lived with her maternal grandparents, Mary and James Weiser, from infancy.

Morgan hasn't seen the 6-year-old since Feb. 13, when he went to pick her up at her maternal grandparents' house in Avalon for a Girl Scouts father-daughter night.

The child has lived with the grandparents, Mary and James Weiser, from infancy, but Morgan says he has been visiting and financially supporting her all along.

On Feb. 13, the Weisers not only refused to let him take the child, but also delivered another bombshell. They told him that Allegheny County's Office of Children, Youth and Families had terminated his parental rights three years earlier and arranged for the Weisers' adoption soon afterward.

This was a shock to Morgan. Although he knew that his daughter, born cocaine-exposed, had been with her grandparents since infancy, he says, none of the Weisers ever told him that CYF had been involved since shortly after the girl's birth. That's why he didn't contact the agency earlier.

He was kept in the dark when the girl's mother surrendered her rights and the agency terminated the parental rights of a man whose name she'd placed on the birth certificate and, as CYF always does, also terminated the rights of any "unknown father."

Ronald S. Morgan is the unknown father, although he says he was never unknown to the Weiser family. And DNA testing proves he's the biological father.

Now he's made himself known loud and clear, appealing to a judge to reverse the 3-year-old adoption of his daughter and give him custody.

Morgan's case illustrates how an agency handling an adoption can do everything by the book and still end up with a bad result.

The child's mother caused the problem in this case, and it's happened in other instances where fathers unknown to the legal system show up after an adoption to claim their children.

The important question is who will suffer the consequences, the adults or the children, says Bruce A. Boyer, director of the Loyola ChildLaw Clinic in Chicago and a lawyer in the highly publicized Baby Richard case in Illinois in the 1990s, which resulted in a 4-year-old being returned to his father.

Illinois passed legislation that, for the most part, tried to put the burden on adults, penalizing mothers who lie about possible fathers and limiting the time in which adoptions can be challenged.

"If the mother is unwilling to tell you who the real father is, you are stymied," Boyer said. "But you cannot allow that to paralyze the system trying to establish permanency for the child."

Double-dipping
When Morgan's baby was born prematurely on July 19, 1997, Morgan wasn't married to or even living with the baby's mother, Dionna Weiser.

Though Morgan contends Weiser told him early in her pregnancy that the baby was his, she named another man, Michael Sill, on the birth certificate.

Nonetheless, Morgan says, Weiser came around right after the birth, demanding child support. He says he paid $200 in cash every other week.

The accountant who has kept the books for Morgan's small machine repair business, Keith D. Fries, of Fries & Associates in Cranberry, recalls asking Morgan at the outset five years ago why he was routinely withdrawing $200 in cash from his account.

"He said it was for child support," Fries recounts. Fries says he understands why Morgan used cash. Morgan has dyslexia, and, as a result, has difficulty reading and writing. He pays someone to write his business checks because of the problems he has doing it himself.

Morgan also bought U.S. Savings bonds in the child's name, and, as the child got older, paid bills as well. For example, he says, he gave the grandparents money for the child's Scouts and school fund-raisers.

Morgan says it generally worked like this: Weiser would ask for money. If he gave it to her, she would arrange for Morgan to visit the child. Those visits in the early years were sporadic, usually once a month. Later, they would become weekly.

In the meantime, Weiser had told CYF that Sill was the father, and he was visiting the baby, under the watch of a CYF supervisor. That continued for two years, until Sill disappeared.

While Morgan says he was paying Weiser, CYF was paying her parents to care for his daughter.

In the summer of 2001, Morgan says, he started giving the child support money directly to the grandparents. He says he did so because, when he was paying Weiser, the maternal grandparents often prevented him from seeing his child until they were sure their daughter had received a payment. By giving the money directly to the grandparents, that problem was solved, and he was more sure the money would be spent on his child.

Morgan told the court he now believes that he and CYF were scammed. If Weiser had named him on the birth certificate or had told CYF he might be the father, then CYF would have sued him for support. He'd have ended up giving money to CYF and would have stopped handing it to Weiser. That would have resulted in less money to the family.

The practice of keeping the real father out of the legal system, where he'll be hit up for formal child support, is not uncommon in cases in which the mothers are receiving welfare benefits. Mothers will tell welfare officials they just don't know the father's name or offer a fake one. Then welfare can't find a father to reimburse the state. But the mother can collect both welfare and cash from the father.

Weiser could not be located for comment on Morgan's allegations, and the grandparents and their attorney declined comment. CYF does not dispute that Morgan is the biological father, but the head of its legal division handling terminations, Paula Benucci said, "We do not believe the adoption should be overturned as the agency did everything in accordance with the Adoption Act."

Even if Weiser didn't name Morgan, he believed he was the father. Yet he left his daughter in the care of others for several reasons.

For one, he says, he always hoped Weiser would get clean and take over care of the child. Also, he routinely worked out of town four days a week. So it seemed right to leave her with grandparents.

The arrangement worked, he says, but in the early years, the grandparents would not let him see the child unless Weiser got her for him, claiming they could not be sure he was the father.

As a result, he had genetic testing done. It proved he was the father. After he showed the grandparents the documentation, he said, they permitted him to take the child without argument.

He would get her every Monday after school and on holidays. Their routine was to go to the bank, go out to eat, then attend a crafts class at the Ross recreation center. The woman who teaches those classes, Joyce Mundie, says of the pair, "He is so good to her. He worships her. And she loves him. He does so much for her."

CYF impatient
While Morgan waited for Weiser to assume her maternal responsibilities, CYF grew impatient. After giving Weiser three years, it did what child welfare agencies do with waiting foster children, it terminated the parents' rights and gave the child new parents through adoption.

When CYF asks a judge to terminate a parent's rights, it takes extraordinary steps to locate missing mothers and fathers in case they want to protest.

In Sill's case, CYF went to his last known addresses, questioned relatives and checked prison listings, voter and motor vehicle registration, the post office and phone directories.

They didn't find him, but that was all of no use anyway, because Sill is not the child's father.

"If the mother doesn't name the father, it is impossible to know who the father is," said Benucci.

"What can you do?" Boyer asked. "It is information in the head of one and only one person."

When CYF failed to find Sill, it advertised its intention to terminate his rights in classified ads in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and Pittsburgh Legal Journal. The ad extended the warning to any "unknown father" of the child born to Dionna Renee Weiser on July 19, 1997.

The advertising, standard practice, is supposed to catch potential fathers whom a woman has failed to name or whose names she might not know. The tiny ads aren't widely read and rarely connect a father to a child. For Morgan, the publication was particularly useless because of his difficulty with reading.

In addition, in Morgan's mind, he was the known father. He presented himself as the girl's father and paid support.

But CYF did not know that. It persuaded a judge to terminate Sill and the unknown father, and the adoption proceeded. In August 2001, the grandparents began collecting about $450 a month in adoption subsidy instead of foster care payments of approximately the same amount.

"Why didn't they tell me the day they got the adoption paper signed?" Morgan asks. Then he answers his own question: Because, he says, he was also paying them $400 a month. What's more, he says, the night the Weisers refused to let him take his daughter to Scouts, they told him he could have her only if he started paying more than $400 a month.

Hearing in June
When Morgan learned of the adoption, he went to court and asked that it be overturned. He has been granted a June hearing.

These cases are difficult, Loyola's Boyer says. "You must have some way of deciding who is responsible for a child, and you cannot open it up to everyone. So you have to have some rules. But those rules will not work for everyone."

His state, Illinois, has some rules that Pennsylvania doesn't have. There, an adoption cannot be challenged after a year. Morgan would be out of luck there.

Also in Illinois, it's a felony for a mother to fail to name any man who possibly could be the father. Those names are listed, and agencies then check that registry for notification of termination of rights proceedings.

Morgan thinks such a statute in Pennsylvania might have made Weiser think twice before failing to mention him.

Now, all he can do is await the hearing. In the meantime, he resents being characterized as the unknown father. "I was a known father. I was known to these people from day one."