Board Thread:Spoilers!/@comment-23906605-20131017110136/@comment-1293767-20131027075759

TNOandXadric wrote: They also consider Emma Henry's mother even though she has approximately zero right to him and only gets to see him with Regina's consent because it was a closed adoption, so...

If you go into the legality of Emma's rights, you also have to recognize that Regina has absolutely zero legal right to Henry either. Emma gave Henry up for adoption to whatever state she was in at the time. She lost her rights to him at that point, period.

But Regina did not adopt him legally. She did it:

1. Through the curse, so her entire Storybrooke existence is a fake. If there ever were legal papers involved, her occupation, her address, etc, etc, etc... would all be false. Essentially, the forging of adoption papers. Just because she used magic instead of ink doesn't make it any less untrue.

2. The outside world didn't even know Storybrooke existed. It was just a big empty space on a map as far as the U.S. was concerned.

3. Given both of the above points, Regina not being a U.S. citizen (or citizen from anywhere else in the non-magic world) and Storybrooke not existing even as an illusion of a real town to the outside world, there would be no inter-realm adoption laws in the way that there are international adoption laws. Regina doesn't even exist to the U.S. government; she's literally a fairytale as far as they are concerned.

So really, looking at it legally, Henry was born on U.S. soil and is therefore a U.S. citizen, but was given up for adoption, so the only one who has any legal rights to him is the state he was born in until he's 18.