In Sarasota, Fla., a circuit court ruled that Kimberly Mays, 14, switched at birth with another baby in the hospital, cannot be forced to visit her biological parents, Ernest and Regina Twigg. The case was seen as a victory for children’s rights. Kimberly, Judge Stephen Dakan ruled, is entitled to the privacy and pursuit of happiness recognized by the Florida constitution-and she had a right to bring to the court her desire to be free of her birthparents. “To declare [the Twiggs] to be her natural parents,” the judge wrote, “requires more than evidence that they may be her biological parents.” Further, he ruled that Robert Mays–whose first wife died when Kimberly was 2–is not only the girl’s “psychological” father, but also her legal father. (The Twiggs have vowed to appeal.) Mays and his third wife may now proceed with adopting Kimberly.

But the Mayses might take caution from the case of Gregory K., whose much–publicized “divorce” from his birthmother inspired Kimberly’s own suit. just a few hours after the Mays-Twigg decision, a Florida appeals court upheld the 1992 decision allowing Gregory K., then 12, to sever ties with his birthmother–but not, significantly, because he had sought the divorce himself. Rather, the court let the decision stand only because several adults, including a court-appointed guardian, had also sought the separation on his behalf. The three-judge panel said that in Florida a minor has no legal rights to seek a parental separation. If this appellate ruling had been made before Kimberly’s, the judge in her case might not have ruled as he did. In another setback for Gregory, now known as Shawn Russ, the appellate court also reversed his adoption by child-advocacy lawyer George Russ. The reason was a legal technicality–his birthmother had not exhausted the appeals process–but it leaves Gregory/Shawn once more in legal limbo.

Such custody battles have become so bedeviling that a Middlebury, Vt., court took a divide-the-baby approach in yet another adoption case last week. Probate Judge Chester Ketcham issued a semi-Solomonic decision in which the birth certificate of 9-month-old Peter Harriman McDurfee will be amended to record an odd couple as his parents: his adoptive mother and his biological father–who didn’t know about the adoption until six weeks after the birth. The arrangement is a compromise that has never been tried before. “Everybody had to give up something, but everyone in the case is a winner,” said Peter Langrock, the attorney for Daniel Harriman, the biological father. “It’s a situation built on love and extended family rather than selfishness.” Unfortunately that selfishness is too often the prime motivation of parents fighting over a baby. And it’s easy for emotions to take over when the legal system provides so little guidance for parents navigating the brave new world of adoption rights.