Tyler Baltierra says he and Catelynn Lowell do not really have a relationship with Carly, the daughter they placed for adoption in 2009. Instead, he said, the family’s contact now runs through an email account they set up for her.
On the April 27 episode of the Cake For Dinner podcast, Baltierra said email is “pretty much the only way” they are maintaining any kind of communication with Carly, who is 16. He said they created the address after Brandon Davis and Teresa Davis, Carly’s adoptive parents, closed the adoption in 2023, and that they could hand over the login and password if Carly ever wants it. “We figured if we set up an email for her, and write to it, and then one day if she ever wants it, we can give her the login and the password,” he said. “And she can kind of just go through the email herself.”
The comments add a sharper edge to a family story that has unfolded publicly for years. Baltierra and Lowell were teenagers when they placed Carly for adoption. They later married in August 2015 and now have three children together, while Carly lives with her adoptive parents. Their relationship with the Davises has grown strained over time, leaving the email account as a narrow and awkward bridge between the families.
Lowell set out the emotional boundaries earlier this year, saying in January that their bond with Carly is whatever Carly wants it to be. She said Carly may want a relationship with her biological siblings, with her biological parents, or with neither, and that the choice should be hers. Baltierra echoed that uncertainty on the podcast, where he said the arrangement is essentially the only communication they have right now.
The tension in the story is not that there is no contact, but that contact exists in a form so limited it can be offered, stored and handed back later. Baltierra also said during the May 2025 season finale of Teen Mom: The Next Chapter that he later came to regret placing Carly for adoption, a confession that gives the current arrangement even more weight. For now, the only clear answer is that Carly controls whether this relationship grows at all, and the adults around her are waiting for that decision.
