Gregory Kingsley
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Gregory Ralph Kingsley (b. July 28, 1980) made legal history in America when he went to court to sever his legal ties to his parents—and won. Kingsley was born in Denver, Colorado to Ralph Kingsley, Senior and Rachel Kingsley. The eldest of three children, he has two brothers Jeremiah (b. 1982) and Zachary.
Ralph was estranged from his family when the three children were very young and Rachel had custodial rights over their sons. However Gregory went to live with his father while his two brothers remained with their mother. While living with his father Gregory was forbidden to have contact with his mother. Through a series of events Gregory eventually came to live with his mother and two siblings. However, because of his mothers lifestyle choice and drug use she was unable to care for her three children leading to Rachel voluntarily putting Gregory and Jeremiah into foster care in 1990. Gregory ended up being placed at Lake County Boys' Ranch, a care home for boys.[1] It was here that Gregory met George Russ, an attorney volunteering at the home, and the two struck a friendship. Russ empathized with the child's plight as he himself had an unsettled childhood. In October 1991, he and his wife Lizabeth agreed to foster Gregory, bringing him to live with their eight biological children.
In 1992, with the support of the Russ family, Gregory took steps to legally divorce his parents after deciding he now had a settled life with his foster family and did not wish to be uprooted again. He became known to the media as 'Gregory K'. On June 9, Judge Thomas Kirk deemed that Gregory had the same rights as an adult to fight for his own interests and ruled that the child could file his petition for divorce. On September 25, after a two-day trial that was televised, Judge Kirk ruled that Gregory had been neglected and abandoned by Ralph and Rachel Kingsley and terminated their parental rights before awarding full custody of the boy to George and Lizabeth Russ.[2] After winning the case, he was presented with a t-shirt that had the name 'Shawn Russ' printed on it as well as the number 9 to show he was the Russ' ninth child.[3]
On appeal, however, the Court of Appeals ruled the trial court erred in granting standing to the child to divorce his parents. The Court of Appeals held (1) although the child lacked legal capacity to institute a proceeding to terminate his parental rights in order to free himself for adoption by his foster parents, the lower court's ruling was harmless error because his foster parents, his guardian ad litem, and the State had also filed termination petitions on his behalf, (2) that the trial court erred in trying the termination and adoption proceedings simultaneously but that such error was harmless error and (3) that the mother's immediate appeal of the order terminating her parental rights deprived the lower court of the authority to enter an order granting the adoption and, thus, remanded the lower court's adoption order.
Shawn is now one of the ten Russ children, who include Robert, Amy, Tiffany, Bryan, Johnny, Shawn, Melanie, Paul, Brandon and Blake.
This case inspired Kimberly Mays, a seventeen-year-old girl who was switched at birth in 1978 in the hospital she was born in, to take similar legal measures to divorce herself from her biological parents Ernest and Regina Twigg, who were trying to sue for full custody of her when she wanted to remain with Robert Mays, the man who raised her as his daughter.
The Gregory K case has been portrayed in two made-for-television films: Switching Parents, which starred Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Gregory and A Place to Be Loved where Tom Guiry undertook the role of Gregory.
