Personal Injury

Adoption

Adoption is a two-step legal process in which the birth parents' legal rights to the child are terminated and new rights and obligations are created in the adoptive parents. Adoption is the method by which a parent-child relationship is created between individuals not biologically related to each other. Through adoption, the child is given the same rights, privileges, and duties as a biological child, including inheritance rights and the right to support, and the parents acquire the same rights, privileges, and duties as birth parents.

Each state has very specific laws that regulate the adoption process. To be eligible to adopt, the prospective parent must meet his or her state's specific requirements. Adoptive parents usually must go through a detailed application and approval process, often conducted with the assistance of an attorney, an adoption agency, or both, and which can involve significant paperwork and the completion of a home study. Factors considered in determining whether to grant an adoption include the prospective parents' economic status, home environment, age, and health. The child's best interests, however, are of paramount concern in deciding whether to grant the adoption. In most states, a child may be adopted by a single person, a married couple, or even one member of a married couple.

Children become eligible for adoption through a variety of circumstances such as

• when their birth parents are living but have voluntarily relinquished their parental rights so that the child is free to be adopted
  
  
• when the parents' rights have been legally terminated, usually involuntarily through a court process because of abuse or neglect
  
  
• when the child's birth parents are deceased.
  
  

Nearly all states' adoption laws require living birth parents' consent before an adoption can be finalized. Although the birth father's consent has not always been required or emphasized to the same degree as the mother's, prospective adoptive parents are well advised to make every effort to obtain both birth parents' consent to avoid any chance that the validity of the adoption will be contested at a later date. The consent provisions do not apply if the birth parents' rights have been terminated by a court.

There are several types of adoption. One method, becoming increasingly popular due to the high demand and long wait for babies, is international adoption. In international adoption, United States citizens pursue the adoption of a baby or older child who has been orphaned or abandoned in a foreign country. Although much of the paper work is completed in the United States, in most instances foreign travel is required in order to obtain the child and appear in court in the child's birth country. Often, another adoption hearing is held in the adoptive family's state court after the family returns home. Each country has different requirements for adoptive placements, and a lawyer can guide prospective parents through the often-cumbersome process.

Agency placement is another form of adoption. Adoption agencies exist for the sole purpose of matching children and families. They often act as intermediaries between birth and adoptive parents in domestic adoptions, and are responsible for conducting the investigation of the prospective parents in all adoptions. Agency placement has several advantages over private or independent placement: it may minimize the risks of adopting unhealthy children; it protects the anonymity of both sets of parents; it can lessen the incidence of birth parents' revocation of consent; and, through the home study process, it helps to ensure the suitability of the prospective parents. A major disadvantage, however, is that it involves a long, detailed process and can entail many months of waiting.

In an independent placement, the child is transferred directly from the natural mother or her representative to the adoptive parents. Because no agency is involved, a lawyer is essential in this process to ensure that all legal requirements are met and that there will be no (or fewer) surprises after the baby is placed. Independent or private placement adoptions have gained increasing popularity as agency waiting lists expand.

Other types of adoption include stepparent adoptions, blood-relative adoptions, and adoptions involving surrogate motherhood. Although the former two are usually simpler processes, the latter raises legal and ethical issues that can make it a very complicated process. Adoptions can be either open or closed. In an open adoption, the birth and adoptive parents have ongoing contact throughout the child's life, and they may even develop a relationship with the child.

Because adoption raises such important issues, the details are so critical, and it is impossible for both birth and adoptive parents to maintain objectivity in such an emotionally charged situation, the assistance of a lawyer experienced in adoption law can be one of the most import elements of a successful adoption.

Form: Adoption Intake

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Adoption Intake

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