I Adopted My Husband’s Ex-Wife’s Baby So He Would Never Know Foster Care Like I Did (Exclusive)

Family & kids
09/22/2026
I Adopted My Husband’s Ex-Wife’s Baby So He Would Never Know Foster Care Like I Did (Exclusive)

Christie Werts, a 51-year-old mom from Ohio, did something not every woman would do—she adopted her husband’s ex-wife’s son. She did it because she loved him and had a tough childhood.

As of the most recent federal data, 331,747 children were in the U.S. foster care system, and last year alone, only 43,380 of them were adopted, according to foster care statistics compiled by the Christian Alliance for Orphans. Behind every one of those numbers is a family decision that could go either way, and most people never find out just how far someone, a relative, a stepparent, a near-stranger, is willing to go with real kindness, generosity and compassion to make sure a specific child doesn’t become one of them. Christie Werts knows that decision personally. She lived through foster care herself as a kid, and the empathy she carried from it shaped everything that came next. So when tragedy struck her own blended family, she wasn’t about to let history repeat itself for someone she loved, choosing happiness and family over fear, no matter what it cost her.

When the time came, christie didn’t hesitate to show real kindness.

Christie Werts, now 51, crossed paths with her husband, Wesley, 8 years ago, and together they built something bigger than either of them had planned for. Blending their families meant bringing together Christie’s kids, Megan and Vance, with Wesley’s children, Austin and Dakota, 4 kids under one roof learning to be siblings, and a marriage that already asked for more patience and compassion than most.

Then came the phone call no family is ever ready for. Wesley’s ex-wife, mother to Austin and Dakota, had passed away, leaving behind a newborn son, Levi, who had no one else lined up to catch him. Christie and Wesley didn’t spend long weighing the decision. Within a heartbeat, they chose empathy over hesitation and welcomed Levi into their family as if the question had never really been a question at all.

By January 2023, Christie had completed the legal adoption process, and Levi was hers, fully and officially, not a foster placement, not a temporary arrangement, but a son. “When I first heard about Levi, I didn’t think twice; I knew we had to take him into our family,” she says, and there’s a quiet kind of happiness in how simply she says it, like the hardest decision of her life somehow wasn’t hard at all once love was involved.

Christie’s own childhood shaped every part of that decision.

She experienced real hardship in the foster care system growing up and one person’s kindness was what made it bearable. This is exactly why she wasn’t willing to risk Levi going through anything similar without that same certainty. “I myself was a foster kid and, although I had a great experience for the most part, I did not want him going to foster care,” she explains. “My husband did not really speak to the biological mother’s family often, but she had Levi on a Monday and passed away that Friday.” 4 days. That’s all the warning life gave them before everything changed.

The empathy behind that decision came with real sacrifice attached. “We lived in another state at the time, so we sold our home in Ohio and rented a house in Texas because we had to officially foster to adopt him,” Christie says. “So we did — the process took 16 months.” 16 months of paperwork, uncertainty, and a life uprooted, all so one baby wouldn’t have to grow up without a family that already loved his siblings.

Christie is careful to say her own foster care experience wasn’t a tragedy. It just wasn’t a risk she was willing to take with someone else’s child, especially one who shared blood with kids she already considered her own. Her love for her stepchildren ran deep enough that keeping Levi out of the system became about more than compassion for a baby she hadn’t met yet. It was about making sure Austin and Dakota never had to wonder whether their little brother was safe.

That worry, it turned out, was unfounded. Christie has always bonded easily with children, quick connections with her stepkids, instant ones with her biological children, but she wasn’t sure what to expect with Levi, a baby she’d never once held before deciding to reshape her entire life around him. Any doubt disappeared almost immediately. Levi won her over fast, and along with that came a fierce, immediate need to protect him, the kind of love that doesn’t ask for a waiting period.

Christie Werts is a real example of what kindness looks like when it’s inconvenient, expensive, and asked for nothing in return. And if her story moved you, you might also want to read 10 acts of kindness that teach us real personal growth always starts at home.

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