Adoption Conclussion

I’m not sure what happened with this, I guess life! Sorry to leave you all hanging. I feel I owe you a conclussion if you followed along from the start. Two months after the DSS visit (where findings were positive) we finalized the adoption! We got a court date, and when we were called joined the judge in his chambers, signed some papers and that was it. Rather anti-climactic after everything leading up to that point.

To summarize, we spent right around $2000 total on everything and the lawyer. It took about 8 months from start to finish. I feel like things went pretty smoothly for us. After everything was finalized our lawyer sent out for an amended birth certificate for us, and took care of the certificate of adoption which we recieved shortly afterward in the mail.

We’re going on 3 years now, and life has been much easier for all of us since. It was definitely worth it, and I hope somebody someday finds our story helpful or encouraging. Thanks for following along!

~ijk

Paperwork, Waiting and DSS

So after we hired our lawyer we had to fill out lots of paperwork. I know I mentioned past addresses and things of that nature. Everything was submitted and we did have 2 small revisions to make. At that point my ex needed to be served with notification of the pending adoption proceedings. We didn’t have the current address for my ex and I know from my research that in those instances you might need to hire a private investigator or put an ad in the paper for a set period of time. Essentially you need to show that you made every effort to find and serve the other party. Luckily for us we received notification (the day before my attorney finished up paperwork and was going to send it to the agency they use for service) from a court proceeding related to child support that had my ex’s new address on it, so we were able to update.

To make a long story shorter, we spoke with my ex and came to an agreement that in exchange for signed consent we would forgive all arrears and future support. Things would have gone through anyway (we had been assigned a law guardian at one court appearance who we all met with and her recommendation was in our favor), but this offered us a clean and complete break.

So we’ve filed more paperwork and were informed that DSS (department of social services) would be contacting us because they needed to file a report with the court. I was not aware that this would be happening, I didn’t see it listed anywhere I searched for information so this may be news to you as well. I did read that in step-parent adoptions where the child has been living in the home that a home study is not required, and I feel like this was basically an abbreviated form of that. We were sent a lengthy packet to fill out with information about our families, i.e. list of family members, how we got along growing up and now, religious affiliation, why we were seeking the adoption – fairly detailed stuff. We sent this back and set up a meeting to go over the packet – at our home – and she just recently came over for that. She asked us questions to clarify things on the form, asked questions that amounted to a safety check (do you have smoke detectors etc.), asked about sleeping arrangements, school, things like that, and looked at and briefly spoke with our children before doing a walk through. Now we wait some more while she fills out her report, which she will submit to the court, and then we should get a court date which my attorney says is basically just a meeting with the judge in his chambers to sign the paperwork and make everything official. I’m hoping this goes quickly – at this point it’s been 6 months since we started everything.

So, I hope I can update soon!

~Ilij

Esquire Inquiries

I think I mentioned in my last post that in NY state you are not required to have a lawyer for a step-parent adoption. I did quite a bit of research and decided that with the possible complexities of our case, we’d be better off with one. So, what happens with the lawyer and what do they need from you? Read on for a better idea.

Finding a lawyer was pretty easy. Most of the websites I went to had a little comment section where you can type in a legal question or something about your case and it emails that to the attorney. I don’t know how many I sent messages to, several, and I ended up talking to 2 of them. One wouldn’t have been able to fit us in for at least 2 months, so we went with the other who got us in within a week. He also took the time before we even met or decided to use his services to find case law similar to our situation and wrote up a draft of a retainer agreement which he sent for us to read over at our leisure and compare and contrast if we wanted to. He answered questions and offered suggestions right over the phone during our first conversation. A good first impression.

So we met with him last week and we signed one document specifying the law offices duties and ours as well, and also signed a retainer agreement. From my research I learned that there are 3 main ways lawyers get paid, ours happens to be paid by the hour and requires a retainer. The retainer is the total amount quoted for how many hours our lawyer estimates he will spend working on our case. We pay him that amount and he draws from that as he works for us. At the end of our case if there is anything left over we get that back. We’re hoping that’s the case. His firm asks for $225 per hour, our retainer was $1600. He is located in a very small town and those prices reflect that from what I’ve seen, apparently depending on where you live you can expect to pay anywhere from a couple hundred dollars an hour up to thousands of dollars an hour. Price shop!

In addition to this initial payment, if our case moves on to litigation we will have to pay another retainer to keep using his services. We are also required to pay any extra costs such as court fees, and service of the papers to the non-custodial parent. If service is attempted and they fail we may have to pay to have an ad run in the paper for so many days, or hire an investigator, whatever it takes.

Now that the money talk is out of the way, what else does the lawyer need from us? We need to fill out paperwork asking basic questions like a description of each person in the case, education, general medical history – including shot records of the child and their apgar score from right after they were born. I don’t know why they need this info, but a phone call to the pediatricians office rendered this info pretty easily through fax. The adoptive parent needs to be finger printed, needs a good health statement or physical from their doctor, and they need to fill out all residences they’ve had for the last 28 years. Yes, that’s right, not 25 years or 30 years, 28 years. Don’t ask me why. Lastly we will need to get a certified copy of the child’s birth certificate and a certified copy of our marriage license (you’re required to have been married for at least a year I think it was, before the adoption can take place). Naturally these copies aren’t free either, where we are they will each cost $30 if we go get them in person.

So those are the basics. Hopefully you find this info helpful!

Until next time, ~ilij

Into The Unknown

I don’t really know where this blog is going to go. As of right now, the main focus is going to be our journey through step-parent adoption. I’m the kind of person that likes to know what they’re getting into (as much as possible) before they go into it. I’ve done so much research on what to expect as we embark on our adoption journey, and I felt like I didn’t really get a look at the real ins and outs of the process. So this is for anybody who finds themselves at some point in the position we happen to be in now.

Please keep in mind as you read through this that I am not an expert about these things and am not offering legal advise, I’m just sharing my story. Every situation is unique and your experience is bound to differ from ours in some ways. I’m just hoping that someone out there finds this helpful someday.

A little background: We are doing this in NY state, that’s not NYC, that’s upstate. In NY you aren’t required to have a lawyer to do a step-parent adoption, but if you have a case like ours where we aren’t starting off with the non-custodial parent’s consent, it’ll probably be easier if you do have one. I’ll go more into how we found our lawyer, what we’ve learned from him and what he needs from us in my next post.

“What? You don’t have consent?” or “Why are you doing this?” I know I’d be wondering, so here it is in short: In our particular case we are alleging abandonment. In NY the minimum time frame for this is 6 months. That’s 6 months of absolutely no contact (emotional support) and no child support (financial support). We have reached and exceeded that minimum threshold. This is not the only reason we’ve come to this decision, the main reason being that if something happens to me (as in I die before my child is of age) my spouse who has been the main provider for said child for the last 10 years and has been there as a parent for all of that time consistently and without fail, has no legal recourse when it comes to maintaining custody. When you have a non-custodial parent who has had at least 10 different addresses in as many years, numerous different jobs off and on, has been in and out of jail and rehab, and has never shown that your child’s well-being is a priority to them, you need to do what you need to do to ensure your child is in the best care possible if you’re no longer around for some reason. I’m not even trying to bash or badmouth my ex, those are just the simple facts of our case. 

So, we’ve just started this process, and you’re welcome to follow along with us as we go through this. 

~ilij