Divorce proceedings P-1642/76 - court-confirmed paternal-line record

The December submission quotes doubt about Pál’s paternity, then refers to the natural father’s death and his sister. In the linked P.1642/76 divorce record, Pál states that he had a son with Cvita, and his wife Vera Lakatoš also describes that child. These are concrete records of knowledge and acknowledgment, distinct from formal judicial establishment of paternity.

> “Establishing the circumstances of prenatal and postnatal development—during pregnancy the mother led a disorderly life. After childbirth he lived with his mother for a short time, when she abandoned him. He was brought up by Pál Lakatoš, who claims to be the child’s natural father, but this is unlikely because Cvita lived with several men at the same time.” > “Establishing the manifestations of the origin and development of the problem: after the death of the child’s natural father, the child was left without parental care.” Based on the entry of **16 April 1979**, it is established that care of the minor Milivoj was taken over by Pál Lakatoš’s sister, **Julka Vizmet**, who lived in **Irig**, and that she agreed to care for the child for payment as a foster carer, which constitutes a temporary form of protection.

The judgment states that Pavle’s paternity was never judicially determined. The earlier divorce file contains his personal acknowledgment of a son with Cvita, witness testimony and the judgment’s factual finding that he had a child with her. That comparison distinguishes recorded acknowledgment and findings from a separate operative paternity judgment.

The court established that the plaintiff was born on 28 June 1974 in Novi Sad as Milivoj Miletić and that his biological mother was Cvita Miletić, born on 23 March 1931 in Bila Vlaka, Benkovac, SR Croatia, on the basis of the extract from the City of Novi Sad register of births maintained for the Novi Sad registration district, under serial number 2512 for 1974, and the social worker’s report in the search procedure for Miletić Cvita of 9 March 2005. The court established that, after his birth, the plaintiff lived briefly with his mother, who then abandoned him, and that he subsequently lived with Pavle Lakatoš, on the basis of the contact and casework tracking sheet for Miletić Milivoj, no. 3871/79. The court established that **it had never been judicially determined that Pavle Lkatoš was the plaintiff’s father** on the basis of the plaintiff’s testimony, which was also corroborated by the written documentation submitted. The court established the contents of the Self-Managing Community of Interest for Social Welfare Novi Sad decision no. Up-03-335/79 of 16 April 1979, the full-adoption record no. Up.03-507/79 of 21 June 1979 and the Self-Managing Community of Interest for Social Welfare Novi Sad decision no. Up.03-507/79 of 21 June 1979 by reading those documents. The court established that Vasić Milorad and Tomić Gospava had married on 21 January 1962 in Petrovaradin, and that Gospava had taken the surname Vasić upon marrying, on the basis of the extract from the Municipality of Novi Sad register of marriages maintained under serial number 1 for 1962. The court established the contents of Municipal Court in Novi Sad certificate case no. Kr.II1353/79 of 5 June 1979, Municipal Court in Novi Sad certificate case no. Kr.II1354/79 of 5 June 1979, the “Novograp” certificate no. 02-17/243 of 6 June 1979, the medical certificate, protocol no. 805 of 4 June 1979 and the medical certificate, protocol no. 9/7 of 11 June 1979, by reading those documents. The court established the contents of psychologist Cvetko Ratković’s opinion of 19 June 1979, social worker Vera Radovanović’s report of 12 June 1979 and pedagogue Milosava Gudelj’s report of 18 June 1979 by reading those documents. The court established that, by the Centre for Social Work of the City of Novi Sad record no. Up.02-987/84 of 26 September 1984, the plaintiff was adopted by Petrović Periša and Petrović Georgina, née Miljković, and that it was determined that he would henceforth bear the adopters’ surname, Petrović, by reading the extract from the City of Novi Sad register of births maintained for the Novi Sad registration district, under serial number 2463 for 1979.

Public-instrument proof order and the earlier paternal court record. The order of 9 January 1980 expressly requires evidence of acknowledgment in a public instrument, before the registrar or in a will, or of parenthood established by a final court judgment. The earlier P-1642/76 court record contains Pavle's own statement, “I fathered a son with her” (English transcript, line 652), followed by the court's factual finding that he lived with Miletić Cvita, with whom he fathered a child cared for by Kopljan Roža (line 722). These are a personal acknowledgment recorded in a court public instrument and a court-accepted factual record, directly relevant to the proof route ordered in 1980. The claim that Pavle did not acknowledge the child cannot be read while disregarding those judicial records. This comparison links the recorded personal statement and factual findings; it does not relabel the divorce judgment's operative part as a separate paternity judgment.

In the renewed proceedings, the court of first instance shall require the temporary guardian of the minor Milivoj Miletić to provide evidence regarding the degree of kinship, that is, the existence of paternity between the decedent and the minor. In that regard, evidence shall be obtained as to whether the decedent recognized Milivoj as his child before the registrar, in a public instrument, or in a will, or whether parenthood was established by a final court judgment, or otherwise in the manner prescribed by law. Thereafter, the court shall again assess whether Milivoj may inherit from the estate and shall render a new decision in the part that was set aside.

The appellate reasons refer to the late Pavle’s divorce statements but deny that he acknowledged paternity. The complete P.1642/76 file allows his statements about the child, his request concerning paternity and Lakatoš Vera’s statements to be checked separately from the absence of a final formal determination.

Article 41 of the Law on Adoption of the Socialist Autonomous Province of Vojvodina (Official Gazette of SAPV, no. 24/76) provides that a full adoption is void if, when it was established, the conditions prescribed in Article 4 paragraphs 3 and 4, Article 10 paragraph 1, Article 30 paragraphs 1, 2 and 4, and Article 31 were not fulfilled, or while the reasons under Article 11 prohibiting the establishment of adoption exist, or if the prior consent under Article 12 of that law does not exist. During the proceedings and in his grounds of appeal, the plaintiff principally argues that the conditions under **Article 31** of that law were not met for the establishment of his full adoption on 21 June 1979 by the adopters Milorad and Gospava Vasić. This provision, in paragraph 1, provides that a child under five years of age may be fully adopted if the parents are not alive or are unknown, or have abandoned the child and their whereabouts have not been established even after six months from abandonment. Paragraph 4 provides that if one parent is not alive or is unknown, a child under five years of age may also be fully adopted with the prior consent of the other parent. In this court’s view, it was not disputed during the proceedings that Pavle Lakatoš, whom the plaintiff claims to be his biological father, died on 7 November 1978, hence before the full adoption at issue was established. At the same time, despite all the facts to which the plaintiff points—his life with Pavle and the statements in the divorce proceedings of the late Pavle and his wife Veronika—the late Pavle Lakatoš did not acknowledge paternity, nor was it established by a judicial decision. Nor does the fact that the plaintiff was declared heir to the late Pavle Lakatoš by the Municipal Court in Novi Sad’s decision O 196/79 of 23 November 1979 lead to a different conclusion, since the case-file material, the results of the evidentiary

The revision identifies Pavle’s statement at the 26 October 1977 hearing and the divorce judgment’s factual account naming Cvita. This supports comparison of personal acknowledgment with the appellate assertion and the separate issue of a paternity-status judgment.

- that the initial probate decision was subsequently set aside. The first assertion is factually incorrect and directly contradicts judicial file P-1642/76. We again stress that determining paternity is not the subject of these proceedings. Nevertheless, the Court of Appeal plainly distorted the facts in the case file when its reasoning stated that Pavle Lakatoš had not acknowledged the child. In divorce proceedings before the District Court in Novi Sad, P-1642/76, at the main hearing of 26 October 1977, Pavle Lakatoš, examined as a party, stated that after leaving hospital he began living with another woman, an agricultural worker, and that he “had a son with her”; he then identified that woman as Cvita. This fact did not remain merely an oral statement by him. In its judgment P-1642/76 of 26 October 1977, the District Court in Novi Sad stated in its factual findings that Pavle Lakatoš began living with the worker Miletić Cvita, with whom he had a child. Accordingly, the Court of Appeal could not truthfully write that Pavle Lakatoš “did not acknowledge paternity”. If it considered this legally relevant, it could have stated that paternity had not been established by a separate decision. That is not, however, the same as asserting that Pavle Lakatoš had not acknowledged that the child was his. Despite the express ground of appeal that Pavle Lakatoš acknowledged the child in the divorce context, the Court of Appeal asserted the opposite in the contested judgment, further distorting the actual content of the appeal and the facts. The plaintiff did not argue that a final decision had established him as Pavle Lakatoš’s heir. He argued that the probate files, divorce file P-1642/76 and other judicial documents show that the administrative formula “father unknown” was not a neutral description of an absence of information, but a reduction of the real paternal and inheritance trail existing in state files and directly relevant to the lawfulness of full adoption. The Court of Appeal avoided this legal problem on two levels: - first, it made the factually incorrect assertion that Pavle Lakatoš had not acknowledged paternity; - then, it replaced the question of the lawfulness of the administrative classification “father unknown” with the question whether paternity had already been established by a final decision at that time. These are different questions. In doing so, the Court of Appeal did not assess the ground of appeal as actually made. It first distorted it factually, then recast it into a weaker version, and then rejected it. ## 4. INCORRECT APPLICATION OF SUBSTANTIVE LAW ### 1. The substantive law in force when full adoption was established applies to this case

The appeal identifies acknowledgment of the child in the father’s divorce proceedings as evidence that cannot be reduced to the administrative formula of an unknown father. The linked P-1642/76 file contains the relevant statements and judgment.

In other words, the first-instance court formally cited Article 30 but did not establish the decisive facts without which that provision cannot be applied: neither the legal framework governing this particular case, nor the duration and course of the search, nor a lawful basis for substituting the special-purpose guardian’s consent for that of a known mother. #### 3. Pavle Lakatoš and the traces of paternity were not properly assessed The court reduced the issue of Pavle Lakatoš to the simple observation that paternity had not been judicially established. This bypassed the substance of the matter. The proceedings raised and documented traces showing that Pavle Lakatoš: - acknowledged the child in the context of divorce proceedings; - that the family knew of the child’s existence; - that I lived within my paternal family circle; - that I was staying with my paternal grandmother and grandfather; - that my status as the deceased’s son born outside marriage was discussed in the probate proceedings; - that at one point I was even declared an heir. The court did not assess the significance of these traces for whether the administrative formula “father unknown” reflected the actual facts, or represented an administrative reduction of a more complex family and inheritance reality to facilitate full adoption. #### 4. Probate proceedings O.196/79 were not properly assessed The probate proceedings were not incidental background, but one of the central pieces of evidence. They contain: - the record of 19 March 1979, stating that the minor Milivoj was staying with his grandparents, namely the deceased’s parents; - the letter of 20 July 1979, requesting the appointment of a guardian to protect his rights and interests in the probate proceedings; - appellate proceedings Gž 11/80, showing that private heirs possessed information that full-adoption proceedings had taken place before SIZ and that the adopters had stated they did not seek for Milivoj to inherit from anyone. The court did not explain how the same child could exist in one legal channel as Miletić Milivoj, a potential heir of Pavle Lakatoš, and in another as a child without parental care, ready for full adoption and the rewriting of his identity into another family. Nor did the judgment explain why it did not consider that material decisive, although it directly concerns identity, inheritance status and the timing of institutional action towards the child. #### 5. The second adoption in 1984 was left without legal explanation The judgment states that I was adopted by the Petrović couple in 1984 and was assigned their surname, but does not clarify how this was possible at all if a full adoption had already been lawfully established in 1979.

The author invokes divorce case P.1642/76 for Pál’s acknowledgment of the child. That file also contains Cvita’s testimony and is relevant to the public-document acknowledgment issue raised in the probate appeal.

## Source page 4 In practice, this means that, at the time the Court officially proceeds on the basis that I am Miletić Milivoj, the deceased’s son born outside marriage whose inheritance rights need protection, the Self-Managing Community of Interest / Centre for Social Work simultaneously conducts proceedings in which I am treated as a child “without identity” and “without capacity to inherit”, prepared for full adoption with the claim that the adoptive parents “do not seek for the child to inherit from anyone”. ### III. “OWNERSHIP” OF IDENTITY AND FORCED ADMINISTRATIVE ASSIMILATION — EFFECTIVE “SERBIANIZATION” OF THE IDENTITY OF A CHILD OF HUNGARIAN–CROATIAN ORIGIN — A CONTINUING ACT The documents cited reveal not merely a social picture, but a clear pattern of interference with the national, family and personal identity of a child of Hungarian–Croatian origin: - father: Pal (Pavle) Lakatoš, a Hungarian, with paternity acknowledged in civil case P-1642/76 and capacity to inherit recognized in probate case O.196/79; - mother: Cvita Miletić, a Croatian, as recorded in KJ-8 / birth-register entry 2512/1974; - adoptive parents in 1979: Milorad and Gospava Vasić, of Serbian nationality; - adoptive parents in 1984: Periša and Gorgina Petrović, also of Serbian nationality. Despite this, the guardianship body: - asserts in its internal notes that Pal Lakatoš “claims to be the biological father” and that this is “unlikely”, although judicial files now exist that unequivocally confirm paternity; - arrogates to itself the right effectively to nullify acknowledged paternity and paternal Hungarian origin, invoking a social worker’s “assessment” rather than law and facts; - rapidly carries out the child’s full adoption by a couple of Serbian nationality, changing the name and civil-register entry so that the adoptive parents appear to be biological parents. In effect, the Centre for Social Work in Novi Sad behaves as though it can dispose of my identity as property: - it changes my first name and surname; - it crosses out my paternal origin (Lakatoš, Hungarian) and maternal origin (Miletić, Croatian); - it administratively repackages me into an entirely new identity aligned with that of the adoptive parents (Serbian); - it does all this when, as a child, I had already developed the awareness that I was Palika — the son of Pal Lakatoš. Such conduct cannot be regarded as “neutral social protection”, but as forced administrative assimilation (Serbianization): the systematic conversion of a child of a different origin into the majority identity, with the erasure of traces in civil registers and family records. I particularly emphasize that this violation did not end in 1979. It was: