Insurance Issues

When we picked up four kids-in-care, we hadn't considered everything that we would need to arrange to properly see to their needs. We knew that they needed a home, food and schooling, but beyond that we hadn't really thought about it. There's a limit to what you can do on a single day's notice.

One of the issues we hadn't thought much about in advance was insurance. I have my family insured through my employer. The family policy covers medical and dental insurance as most similar plans do. The children arrived uninsured, since neither parent had a job with insurance benefits. They'd been on state aid for a while, but that's all we had record of.

I approached the Human Resources department at work to see what would be necessary to add the new kids to the insurance plan. They told me that the kids could not be added to the policy. In order to add them, I would need custody of the kids to be formally given to me through the courts.

At this point the parents hadn't yet shown signs of serious drug addiction. I don't even know if they were regular drug abusers at that point. All I knew was that the kids were going to be with us for a while while the parents were fighting, and that the parents could not insure them. It's a scary feeling to be financially exposed like that. What if one of the kids needed surgery or hospitalization for some other reason? Whose obligation would it be to pay?

A little study showed me that it was still the parent's responsibility to support their children, even after custody changes. That did me little good, since I knew they had nothing to pay in case of emergency. That all lead to a real soul-searching conversation with the parents. I told them that to properly care for their children, they needed insurance. Since the parents couldn't provide it, there weren't really many options.

I could insure them, but only if I had custody. There may have been some form of state aid available without the formal change in custody, but I wasn't familiar with what agencies to contact at that point. The parents decided with us that it was best to sign over custody, so we went through all the paperwork. Utah has a convenient Internet-based system called OCAP (Online Court Assistance Program) for uncontested cases where you can represent yourself and pay greatly reduced court fees.

We filled out the paperwork, got the required signatures, and got a court date. We were there, both parents were there, and my wife's mother was there together in the courtroom. After a few tears and no objections, we had been given full custody, which allowed us to insure the children through my work policy. All I needed was to take to our Human Resources department an original stamped version of the court order along with all the birthdates and social security numbers of the children. It was easy, since the custody paperwork had required all that information anyway.

I've changed jobs since then, but it's been the same routine. Get a certificate of creditable coverage for everyone in the family, and take the original custody form to prove that they should be allowed on the insurance policy.

Now that we have custody, it is the parent's responsibility to demonstrate to us at some point in the future that they can once again care for the children. They're back together now, and have at least a desire to get clean. We play it month by month and year by year, always making sure the children know they are welcome and can plan to be with us forever if necessary.

Those of you with a court-ordered custody cases rather than voluntary cases have different rules and requirements, and quite likely a deadline after which the state proceeds to adoption rather than reunification. Those of you with no custody arrangement at all should examine the possibilities closely and do what you can to best care for the children.

For us, it was a poignant but necessary step in giving the children the care they needed. Will it work out that way for you? I couldn't possibly predict that because I don't know your unique situation. I'm simply sharing one case of how things turned out, and hoping to have shared some possibilities that will be useful with you.