“The record indicates that the last sexual encounter between father and mother occurred sometime in either September or October of 2011, and the father testified that he made no attempt to contact mother after that event.” 
 
 Prospective adoptive parents have had physical custody of the child since she was released from the hospital after birth. A Facebook message a woman sent to her former sex partner announcing she was pregnant was not sufficient legal notice to support terminating the father’s parental rights, the Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled this week. In the majority opinion, Justice Combs noted that even though the birth mother sent the father a Facebook message revealing that she was pregnant and planned to give the child up for adoption, the father testified he didn’t see the message until sometime after the child’s June 2012 birth. voluntarily relinquished her rights on that same day, and she attended 2013 court proceedings in Rogers County on the motion to terminate McCall's paternity rights, 
 
 The trial court sustained T.Z. The case will now go back to district court to reconsider whether McCall’s parental rights should be terminated. “This Court does not believe that attempts to provide notice via Facebook comport with the requirements of due process,” Justice Douglas Combs wrote in his majority opinion. The trial court judge took the position that when the father actually found out about the pregnancy and birth of the child was irrelevant, contending the legal burden was on the father to determine if he might have fathered a child and to exercise his parental rights. Oklahoma precedent reveals that a biological father has a constitutional right to notice of the existence of a child born out of wedlock so that he has the opportunity to assert his right to build a relationship with his son or daughter, the court found. Entitled to notice 
 
 Combs wrote that the court has consistently ruled that “in Oklahoma, the natural father of a child born out of wedlock is entitled to notice of the existence of the child so that the natural father has a chance to exercise his opportunity interest in developing a relationship with a child.” 
 
 “Instead of contacting father directly, mother left him a message on Facebook, which is an unreliable method of communication if the account holder does not check it regularly or have it configured in such a way as to provide notification of unread messages by some other means,” Combs wrote. “This court is unwilling to declare notice via Facebook alone sufficient to meet the requirements of the due process clauses of the United States and Oklahoma Constitutions because it is not reasonably certain to inform those affected.” 
 
 The couple had sex on several occasions beginning in August 2011, but the “father testified that though they were friends, they were never in a romantic relationship,” the Supreme Court decision said. He cannot complacently wait for the female to find him in the event of a pregnancy.” 
 
 He was joined in his dissent by Justices Steven Taylor and Noma Gurich.
– Oklahoma's Supreme Court has ruled that when it comes to informing a man that he is about to become a father, a Facebook post doesn't cut it, legally speaking. In this case, a woman had a three-month fling with a man named Billy McCall in 2011, then realized she was pregnant after they broke things off, reports the Oklahoman. She sent him a Facebook message informing of the big news, gave birth in 2012, then immediately put the baby up for adoption. McCall says he never saw the Facebook post and learned about the baby only after it was born, explains Courthouse News Service. Lower courts declared that McCall's parental rights had been terminated, but the state Supreme Court disagreed. "This court is unwilling to declare notice via Facebook alone sufficient to meet the requirements of the due processes clauses of the United States and Oklahoma Constitutions," wrote a justice in the majority opinion, according to the Wall Street Journal. A dissenting justice wondered why Facebook should be considered different than other forms of communication—"letters can remain unopened; and faxes can be lost"—but no matter, the issue now goes back to the lower courts to determine whether McCall still has fatherly rights to the child. The toddler is now 2 years old and has been living with the same adoptive parents since birth. (In other Facebook legal news, parents might be responsible for their kids' posts.)