Everyone expected five young siblings to be separated that morning.<\/p>\n
Then Carter, a quiet carpenter, stood before the judge.<\/p>\n
He had known the children for only three weeks, but he had already emptied his savings, converted part of his workshop into bedrooms, installed bunk beds and car seats, arranged medical care, and done everything possible to keep them together.<\/p>\n
The state still argued he was too young, single, and inexperienced to raise five children.<\/p>\n
Then the judge asked the question Carter had avoided:<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy these children?\u201d<\/p>\n
Carter finally revealed the truth.<\/p>\n
Twenty years earlier, he had sat in that same courthouse as one of five siblings whose parents had died in a fire.<\/p>\n
A judge separated them into different foster homes.<\/p>\n
Carter was nine.<\/p>\n
He remembered running after the car carrying his little brother, who screamed his name through the back window.<\/p>\n
He never saw him again.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I saw these five children,\u201d Carter told the court, \u201cI promised another family wouldn\u2019t be torn apart if I could stop it.\u201d<\/p>\n
The courtroom went silent.<\/p>\n
The oldest child, Eli, was asked what he wanted.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just want us to stay together.\u201d<\/p>\n
The judge denied the state\u2019s request to separate them and granted Carter temporary custody.<\/p>\n
As they drove home together, Eli asked:<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re really staying together?\u201d<\/p>\n
Carter smiled.<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, buddy. We are.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Everyone expected five young siblings to be separated that morning. Then Carter, a quiet carpenter, stood before the judge. He had known the children for only three weeks, but he had already emptied his savings, converted part of his workshop into bedrooms, installed bunk beds and car seats, arranged medical care, and done everything possible …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9533,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9532","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9532","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9532"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9532\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9534,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9532\/revisions\/9534"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9533"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}