Man asks to reverse adoption

Birth father says rights not waived

A Kansas man has asked the Arkansas Supreme Court to reverse the adoption granted to his ex-wife’s new husband, and his appeal argues that he was forbidden by court order from contacting his daughter and thus did not waive his rights as a father.

On Friday, Antonio Martini’s attorney, James Tripcony, filed a petition for review with the state’s high court, asking it to hear a case that prompted a 5-4 decision by the Arkansas Court of Appeals earlier this month. The appeals court upheld a lower court’s decision to approve the adoption of Martini’s 4-year-old daughter by her mother’s new husband.

Martini never consented to the girl’s June 2014 adoption, according to the court filings.

According to the majority of appellate judges in the Dec. 2 ruling, Martini went

more than a year without any “significant” communication with the young girl, rendering his consent unnecessary.

The problem, Tripcony said in an interview Monday, is that Martini was under a no-contact order with his ex-wife, Renita Price, who left town with Martini’s daughter as well as her son, whom Martini had helped raise.

According to court records, Martini had no idea where Price took the children and was told that reaching out to the children would leave him in violation of a court order and back in jail.

“We believe that he had justifiable cause for not having significant contact with his children,” Tripcony, whose firm specializes in family law, said. “It was a 5-to-4 decision. In 35 years of practicing, I don’t know if I’ve seen a 5-4 decision in a custody case by the Court of Appeals. It’s real unusual.”

Martini and Price married in 2006 and separated in December 2009 after Martini was arrested and charged with one count of domestic violence while they lived in the state of Washington.

Eventually, Price took the two children to Arkansas. Martini’s biological daughter was 2 years old at the time.

After Martini pleaded guilty in the Washington court, he was sentenced to probation and given a no-contact order that did not explicitly prevent him from contacting the young children.

In October 2012, the couple officially divorced, and Martini was allowed visitation under the supervision of the children’s

therapist. He met with them several times in late 2012 and early 2013 after he moved to Texas. He later moved to Kansas, according to court records.

Not long after marrying Renita Price, Christopher Price petitioned the Faulkner County Circuit Court to adopt Martini’s daughter. The court ordered that Christopher Price take full parental custody of the girl in June 2014.

Martini appealed to the Court of Appeals, which sided against him. The court ruled that correspondence sent from his ex-wife on behalf of the children let him know where they were.

Judges found that though there was a court order barring contact with his ex-wife — an order that ran from late 2009 through early 2012 — it did not apply to his children. The appeals court ruled that the trial court judge was within his rights to rule that Martini’s explanations for the gap in communication were “either

not credible or not sufficient to constitute justifiable cause.”

But four appellate judges felt that Martini was justified in being wary of contacting his children, because violating his probation could result in a twoyear stint in prison. According to court records, Martini’s probation officers told him not to respond to emails sent to him from either child.

“Given the undisputed fact that [Martini] was under a no-contact order that prohibited him from contacting his wife in any fashion … and his daughter was too young to be contacted directly … I would reverse the finding that [Martini’s] consent to her adoption was not required,” Court of Appeals Judge Kenneth Hixson wrote in his dissent. “It is uncertain whether attempts to contact the children would have actually resulted in a violation of the no-contact order … but in my view, these circumstances provided an adequate and justifiable excuse … for [Martini’s] lapse in communication.”