Where Is Kristine Barnett Now?

It felt like something from a scary movie when Kristine Barnett admitted that her adopted daughter, Natalia Grace, age eight, was actually an adult asking as a child.

Natalia was adopted from Ukraine by Kristine and her husband, Michael, in 2010. But she urgently suggested that she was harassing their family and was actually a 22-year-old woman. She believed tried to to harm Kristine as well. Diastrophic dysplasia is a rare form of dwarfism that makes it difficult to determine Natalia’s actual age. Her age was legally raised from 8 to 22 by Kristine and Michael in 2012. According to Kristine, the police ordered them to do it.

Natalia was left alone in an Indiana apartment when the Barnetts relocated to Canada in 2013. They were accused of ignoring a child six years later. Yet, the charges towards Kristine were dropped in 2023 after Michael proved not guilty in 2022.

Later, Natalia took a DNA test for the documentary The Curious Case of Natalia Grace: Natalia Speaks, which was filmed in 2024. She is currently around 22 years old, so when the Barnetts adopted her, she was probably only 7 years old and not yet an adult. She is actually 21 years old.

Good American Family, a Hulu film based on Natalia’s story, will debut on March 19. Mark Duplass shows Michael, Ellen Pompeo plays Kristine, and Imogen Faith Reid, an upcoming actress, plays Natalia.

Many people are wondering where Kristine Barnett is now that the story is back in the news. Here are our current understandings and her responses to the charges made against her.

Who is Kristine Barnett?

In 2010, Kristine Barnett and her then-husband Michael adopted Natalia Grace while she was the mom of three sons in Indiana. In 2013, she written an essay titled The Spark: A Mother’s Story of Nurturing, Genius, and Autism. She is also an author. She said in the book that her son Jacob had a photographic memory and a higher IQ than Einstein.

In September 2019, Kristine and Michael were charged with ignoring a dependent after they moved Natalia into multiple apartments, legally changed her age, and then left for Canada. According to the Journal & Courier, Michael told police that Kristine instructed Natalia to claim that she was 22 years old and simply had a youthful appearance.Michael was cleared of all charges in 2022. The charges against Kristine were also dropped the following year.

Are Kristine Barnett and Michael Barnett still together?

According to PEOPLE records, Michael filed for divorce in February 2014, one year after they moved to Canada and left Natalia alone in an apartment in Indiana.

Michael and Natalia met in person ten years later in the documentary The Curious Case of Natalia Grace. He claimed that during their marriage, Kristine had also abused and controlled him.

Michael informed her, “I had the same monster you did.” “She forced me to be exactly who she wanted me to be, controlled me, put me down, and threatened me.”

In her subsequent Facebook post, Kristine rejected those claims.

Where is Kristine Barnett now and what does she do for a living?

Even after the ID documentary series and the 2025 Hulu drama Good American Family brought increased attention to her case, Kristine Barnett continues to maintain that she did nothing wrong. She claimed that those who are still talking about Natalia are “pathetic,” and that those who are acting as though they care about it have stopped in a May 2024 Facebook post.

She wrote, “You never really cared.” “You only intended to harass a mother.”

Kristine describes herself as a “Author, Loving Mother, Advocate for Children With Disabilities, Writer, & Activist” on her public Facebook page. She revealed in March 2024 that she had written a new book, Witch Hunt: The Kristine Barnett Story, in which she provides her version of events.

Where are Kristine and Michael Barnett Now?

Ellen Pompeo and Mark Duplass play Kristine and Michael Barnett in the Hulu series “Good American Family,” but what are the real-life couple up to these days?

Michael and Kristine are no longer together. After accusing Kristine of emotional abuse, Michael filed for divorce in 2014.

“You and I both had the same monster. In the 2023 Investigation Discovery documentary “The Curious Case of Natalia Grace: Natalia Speaks,” Michael told his former adoptive daughter Natalia Grace, “I was extremely controlled, put down, and threatened.”
Michael went on to say, “Everything that was me was torn away, and I was led and told to be exactly what [Kristine] wanted me to be.”