Verbena 'Ever's Housekeeper': I'm not saying a word. Not one single word.
Verbena 'Ever's Housekeeper': You didn't know what a good thing you had when you had it.
Mitch Evers: Huh?
Mitch Evers: Hey, Maggie, you look pretty good. What did you do to yourself?
Margaret 'Maggie' McKendrick: Do to myself?
Susan's roommate at camp Inch: The nerve of her! Coming here with your face.
Susan's other roommate: What are you gonna do about it?
Susan Evers: Do? What in heaven's sake can I do, silly?
Susan's other roommate: I'd bite off her nose. Then she wouldn't look like you.
Charles McKendrick: Louise, for once I'm putting my foot down. Now let them alone.
Sharon McKendrick: 'Cos that's how true love creates its beautiful agony. All splendid lovers had just dreadful times! Er, Pelias and Melisande, Daphnis and Chloë. History's just jammed with stories of lovers parted by some silly thing.
Mitch Evers: Would you mind putting on something decent?
Margaret 'Maggie' McKendrick: I'm dressed perfectly decent.
Mitch Evers: Yeah, running around in my bathrobe. The priest could come in here any minute, it looks like we just.
Margaret 'Maggie' McKendrick: Like we what?
Mitch Evers: Just go upstairs and put on some clothes.
Answer: None. It's total fiction made up solely for the purpose of the movie. Even for a movie, it's far beyond the "suspension of disbelief" that siblings would ever be divided up between the two parents, and neither would have no contact with them, much less be prevented from knowing they had a brother or sister.
raywest ★
It was during the 1960s, the courts had no way of forcing parents to share children. They could have very easily just stayed away from each other out of the view of the judicial system.
This is what I always assumed as well. That this wasn't decided by court, the parents decided this on their own and did not bring it up to the court.
There has actually been a history of separating identical twins as babies, as there has been a fascination in studying what ways they'd be alike, and how they'd be different. During this time period, there were even agencies that would pay women who gave birth to identical twins to give them up for adoption, and have them be adopted in separate families. In today's world, this would not happen, but I wouldn't put it past a judge back in the 1960s.