Lawyer: Madonna Has Filed Appeal to Adoption Ruling

Usmagazine

Madonna has already filed her appeal following the judge's ruling that she can't adopt Mercy James, her lawyer confirms.

"We are very surprised with this ruling," Alan Chinula tells Us.

On Wednesday, Chinula told Us he didn't see "any law in Malawi that [could] stop" the adoption. But Judge Esme Chombo cited requirements that adoptive parents reside in the country for 18 to 24 months.

In her ruling, the judge points out Madonna arrived in Malawi just last Sunday, and hadn't been in the country since she adopted David Banda, 3, in 2006.

But Women and Child Welfare minister Anna Kachikho -- who oversees the country's adoptions -- says she's "shocked by the ruling.

"I don't see what's wrong for Madonna to take one child as her own," she tells Us. "She has not used the back door."

Kachikho points out the singer's organization Raising Malawi is assisting over 25,000 orphans in the poverty-stricken nation.

The country's information minister Patricia Kaliati said yesterday: "We support her adoption process. Madonna's been good to us...and she's proved she can take care of David."

So why was Madonna allowed to adopt David, but not Mercy?

"It's a shocker, but [Chombo] belongs to the old school; she is very religious and a moralist," a source at Malawi's High Court tells Us. "She might not be in favor of Madonna's lifestyle of getting in and out of relationships and her semi-nude stage antics."