This Father Should Never Have Needed a Lawyer: Baby Chance and Georgia’s Outdated Legitimation Laws

By Kenneth Braswell, CEO, Fathers Incorporated

There are moments when the law reveals its sharpest edges not through theory or ideology, but through lived pain. One of those moments is the case of “Baby Chance,” a child born into tragedy, a father forced to fight for the most basic recognition of parenthood, and a system that required emergency legal intervention simply to allow a biological father to take his own son home.

A DeKalb County judge has awarded Adrian Harden sole legal and physical custody of his infant son, known in court filings as Baby Chance. Legal experts have called the ruling unprecedented, not because a father stepped up, but because the path he was forced to travel should never have been necessary in the first place.

Chance’s mother, Adriana Smith, was just weeks into her pregnancy when she suffered catastrophic medical complications. Declared brain dead in February 2025, she remained on life support for months until Chance was delivered prematurely by emergency C-section. The story captured national attention, drawing debates about Georgia’s abortion law, medical ethics, and the limits of policy when confronted with human life.

And beneath those headlines sat another legal issue with ethical and policy implications: Despite confirmed paternity, readiness, love and responsibility, Chance’s father had no automatic legal rights to his child.

Not because he failed.

Not because he abandoned.

Not because he was absent.

But because Georgia law says that when a child is born to unmarried parents, a biological father is legally a stranger until the court says otherwise.

That truth is the heart of this story.

Georgia’s legitimation statute was designed decades ago to address questions of responsibility and parental involvement, but in practice, it has become a barrier that punishes fathers at the exact moment children need stability most. Legitimation requires an unmarried father to file a petition, appear in court, and wait for a judge to formally establish a legal relationship with his child. Until that moment, he cannot make medical decisions or guarantee custody, and in extreme cases, he can be shut out entirely.

When Harden learned that, without legitimation, his newborn son could be discharged from the hospital into state care or placed with someone else, the clock began ticking. His attorneys filed an emergency petition in DeKalb County Superior Court. A temporary order in September ensured Chance would be able to leave the hospital with his father. A final order on December 2 granted Harden sole legal and physical custody.

Relief came, but only after fear, uncertainty, and legal urgency that no parent should ever experience.

This case exposes what many fathers in Georgia already know. The legitimation process does not merely clarify parentage; it withholds parental rights until proven in court. It assumes absence instead of responsibility. It treats biological fatherhood as conditional rather than inherent.

The danger of that assumption becomes painfully clear when tragedy strikes.

When a mother dies, when illness intervenes, when emergencies unfold, time is not a luxury. Children do not have the benefit of waiting for paperwork, hearings, or procedural delays. They need immediate care, immediate decision-making, and immediate protection. In Georgia, unmarried fathers must often fight for the right to provide this critical stability.

This is not an abstract policy debate. It is a lived reality that has left fathers standing outside hospital doors, navigating courtrooms instead of nurseries, and explaining their worthiness while their children lie in incubators.

At Fathers Incorporated, we have seen this pattern for years. We work with fathers who are present, invested, and prepared, yet legally invisible. Men who attend prenatal visits, cut umbilical cords, show up to parent-teacher conferences, and still lack standing in the eyes of the law. Mothers, too, are harmed by this system, forced into legal battles at moments of grief or stress, when collaboration should be supported rather than complicated.

The case of Baby Chance is not an anomaly. It is a spotlight.

It reveals how legitimation laws disproportionately harm families during a crisis. It demonstrates how children can be placed at risk not because of parental unfitness, but because of legal delay. It underscores how policy lags behind the lived realities of modern families.

Most importantly, however, it shows what happens when a father refuses to be sidelined.

Adrian Harden did not ask for special treatment. He asked for recognition. He asked for the right to care for his son. He asked for the paternal rights married fathers receive automatically — something unmarried fathers must earn in court.

That distinction deserves scrutiny.

Marriage should not be the sole gateway to parental legitimacy. Biology alone is not enough under the current law, but responsibility should be. When a father steps forward, acknowledges his child, and demonstrates commitment, the law should meet him there, not block the door.

Georgia’s legitimation statute rests on an outdated framework that no longer reflects the diversity of families. It assumes a default of disengagement rather than involvement. It introduces risk at the exact moment when children are most vulnerable.

Policy reform is not about erasing accountability. It is about aligning the law with the best interests of children. Children benefit from stability. Children benefit from timely decision-making. Children benefit when loving parents are empowered rather than delayed.

Eliminating or fundamentally reforming legitimation in Georgia would not weaken families. It would strengthen them. It would reduce unnecessary court involvement. It would prevent children from entering state systems simply because paperwork has not caught up with reality. It would affirm that fathers matter, not only emotionally, but legally.

At Fathers Incorporated, our work continues on multiple fronts. We provide education to fathers about their rights and responsibilities. We support mothers navigating co-parenting dynamics shaped by legal confusion. We advocate for policy change that centers children rather than bureaucracy. We engage lawmakers, judges, and community leaders to reexamine systems that unintentionally punish the very families they claim to protect.

This case reinforces why that work matters.

Baby Chance remains in the NICU, growing stronger by the day. His father waits, prepared to bring him home and build a life shaped not by legal fear but by love and care. Their journey should not be remembered solely as a medical or political controversy. It should be remembered as a turning point that forced Georgia to confront an uncomfortable truth.

Fathers should not need emergency court orders to be fathers.

Children should not be left in limbo while adults prove what is already evident.

Families deserve laws that respond with compassion, clarity, and common sense when life takes unexpected turns.

The ruling in DeKalb County did the right thing. It recognized a father who was already present. The larger question is whether Georgia will do the same for the thousands of fathers who never make headlines but face the same barriers every day.

The measure of a system is not how it functions when everything goes right, but how it responds when everything goes wrong. Baby Chance’s story asks us to answer that question honestly and act accordingly.