A 30-YEAR-OLD SINGLE MAN ASKED TO ADOPT FIVE SIBLINGS UNDER SEVEN BEFORE THEY WERE SENT TO DIFFERENT HOMES — WHEN THE JUDGE ASKED WHY, HIS ANSWER MADE THE ENTIRE COURTROOM GO QUIET I’m thirty years old.
Single. No wife. No huge bank account. And definitely no mansion. Right now, I’m sitting outside a courtroom at Bellmere Family Court in Westbridge, watching five young children—all under seven—cling tightly to one another on a plastic bench.
In less than an hour, Judge Rowan will decide whether they stay together…
or begin separate lives in different homes. The paperwork calls it placement allocation.
To me, it feels like the beginning of five completely different childhoods.
Only three weeks ago, everything these children knew changed overnight.
I had never met them. But when I saw their faces on the local emergency placement registry, something inside me wouldn’t let me keep scrolling.
The social workers told me my idea was unrealistic. “Evan,” one of them said, “you’re a single man.”
