Unless Congress acts, the current Federal Adoption Tax Credit will expire at the end of 2012.
Without the Federal Adoption Tax Credit, many families will not be able to afford to adopt. This means that children could end up staying in foster care much longer than usual. This means fewer children finding an adoptive family.
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The other day, ABC ran a segment in Good Morning America about using Facebook for adoption. See the following link:
http://abcnews.go.com/US/adoption-facebook-gains-favor/story?id=15654509
Couples are actively using Facebook to adopt, and we are routinely seeing this to expedite adoption in Columbus and throughout Ohio.
Many prospective adoptive parents were reluctant to get personally involved in the search for a birth parent who was willing to place her baby for adoption, preferring instead to delegate this important task to an agency or lawyer. Some believe that if an adoption is meant to be, it will just happen. Do you believe in magic? Times have changed. More couples are refusing to wait on an agency or lawyer to locate a child. There is no rule that says you must wait to locate a birth mother willing to place her child for adoption. Prospective adoptive parents have options.
Today the high demand for infants for adoption and birth mothers greater involvement in the match-making process means that passive adopters are likely to wait for years. Prospective parents are overcoming shyness and willing to publicize their search for a child to the outside world. More couples are taking the lead in the search for a birth mother willing to place her baby for adoption. They are using direct networking through Facebook and YouTube. By playing an active role in locating a child for adoption, couples can receive more information since they are directly involved.
A very fast and effective way to locate a birth mother for adoption is to use direct networking through media such as Facebook and YouTube.
For more information about Adoptions or Contact us.
The Federal adoption tax credit has been enhanced for adoptive parents and prospective parents. The adoption tax credit has been increased to $13,170.00. It is now fully refundable! This means even if you did not owe federal taxes, you will get a refund.
You can qualify for the adoption tax credit whether you do a domestic or foreign adoption and whether or not the child has special needs.
The expenses that qualify include legal, medical, adoption fees, Court costs, and travel expenses. The IRS outlines what qualifies at their website. You must have documentation for your expenses with receipts. Some parents who are in higher income tax brackets may not be eligible.
Disclaimer. I am not a tax preparer. This information is presented for you to share with your tax preparer.
For more information about Adoption or Contact Us.
In Michigan, a couple who is looking for a baby for adoption, put up a billboard advertising their attempt to adopt. Rather than waiting to locate a baby through an agency, they decided to become proactive to find a prospective birth mother on their own.
Although the couple was also networking by asking family, friends and relatives to help, they decided to expand their efforts and target a much larger audience by buying a billboard ad and putting it up on Interstate 75 in Grand Blanc, Michigan. The billboard message was simple. It read “LOVING COUPLE LOOKING TO ADOPT” and listed the couple’s names and phone number. The couple stated that since posting the billboard they have received numerous calls.
Under Ohio law, such advertising is considered illegal. Although many of us lawyers consider the Ohio law that prohibits advertising to be a violation of first amendment rights, to my knowledge this has yet to be challenged.
Ohio law does recognize networking efforts to locate a child. Some couples even decide to advertise out of state. Aggressive networking does work in locating prospective birth mothers interested in placing their baby for adoption.
When choosing an attorney to assist with an adoption matter, prospective clients should do so carefully. Not every attorney is experienced in the adoption area. Just because an attorney has done a step-parent adoption does not mean he is familiar with the intricacies of a private/independent adoption.
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Adoption scams are rare, but occasionally happen. Usually when prospective adoptive parents are desperate to adopt they fail to do due diligence and the necessary homework.
To minimize the risk of being scammed in an adoption, the following suggestions should be considered:
1. Ask tough questions and question the qualifications and methods of locating a baby with the professionals you may work with.
2. Never pay large up-front fees.
3. Only work with professionals whose information and qualifications can be verified.
4. Avoid working with individuals with untraceable telephone numbers.
5. Avoid the urge to wire money to someone who needs it immediately.
6. Get specific answers to all of your questions.
7. Avoid individuals who give evasive answers or few details.
8. Beware of anyone who guarantees a baby within a specific amount of time. Most professionals will not made such promises.
9. Avoid anyone who is pressuring you.
10. Use your common sense and always go with your gut feelings.
For more information about Adoption or Contact Us.
When prospective birth parents are met with, social and medical histories are collected. Medical releases are also requested and may be forwarded to the birth mother’s doctor and hospital before or after the delivery to obtain medical records. All history is sent to you so you may share this information with your doctors. Every attempt is made to get an accurate history, but we rely solely on the birth parents for this information. Therefore, history provided cannot be guaranteed. We do not withhold any negative information. You may consult with independent medical, genetic, and social work experts regarding social and medical information.
Some information about birth parent(s) may be verified using other services. Approximate costs are:
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In 2010 the Adoption Tax Credit now becomes a refundable credit. This is fantastic news for adoptive families.
This means families can now claim the credit in one lump sum on 2010 taxes even if their total tax liability is less than the adoption tax credit.
It gets even better. The change also applies retroactively to families who finalized their adoptions as far back as 2005 and who still have the adoption tax credit to carry forward.
The maximum adoption tax credit per child increases to $13,170 in 2010. Under the expanded benefits, the refundable tax credit allows families who owe no taxes to receive the funds from the government.
Disclaimer: Please consult with your tax preparer.
For more information about Adoption or Contact Us.
Procedures and information available differ for pre January 1, 1964, adoptions; January 1, 1964, to September 18, 1996; and September 18, 1996, and thereafter adoptions.
R.C. 3107.38 provides that for adoptions prior to January 1, 1964, the adopted person may submit a request to the ODJFS for a non-identifying copy of the adoption file or file a petition with the Probate Court pursuant to R.C. 3107.41.
R.C. 3107.41 provides that for adoptions between January 1, 1964, and September 18, 1996, an adopted person twenty-one years or older may file a petition with the Probate Court for the release of certain information.
R.C. 3107.45 to R.C. 3107.53, and R.C. 3107.66 liberalize access to post September 18, 1996, adoption records. An adopted person age twenty-one years or more, an adoptive parent of an adopted person eighteen to twenty-one years, a birth parent or sibling age twenty-one years or older, may obtain from the ODJFS information authorized by other parties.
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An attorney or agency arranging an adoption has a duty to advise the parties of the right to enter into a non binding open adoption. Open adoption allows the exchange of information, including identifying information. The Probate Court may not refuse to approve an adoption because of an open adoption agreement. An open adoption is not legally enforceable. An open adoption agreement cannot:
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The birth parents are given no identifying information about the adopting parents unless you have arranged an open adoption. Birth parents may inquire through our office about the child’s well-being or request a photo. While life may go on for the birth parents, the pain does not end. The exchange of status letters and photographs between the birth parents and the adoptive parents can be arranged through the office. For many prospective birth parents, the knowledge that they may have this type of exchange will not only ease their minds, but it may help them to make the decision to follow through with an adoption plan.
I know you will be preoccupied with the child. However, please take time to remember the birth parents. Many times I am asked by the birth mother, “how are they, how is the baby, are they happy, are they excited?” but my words are not good enough. Please send the birth parents a nice note and picture of the child if the birth parents request for this wonderful gift of life. This small token of appreciation is priceless. It assures the birth parents that the emotional toll taken to go through with the adoption was worth the pain and that they chose the right adoptive parents.
It is wise to mark your calendar and provide a status letter and photographs at one, three, six, nine and twelve months. There is no legal obligation to do so but one should always keep a moral commitment.
For more information about Adoption or Contact Us.
After finalization of your adoption you will need a Social Security Number to take a personal exemption for your child. Because adoptive parents often do not have necessary records (Adoption Certificate or new Birth Certificate) this can be a problem. Some adoptive parents have successfully obtained a Social Security Number by walking into their local Social Security Office using the Adoption Placement Certificate or Final Decree of Adoption.
Another option is to obtain a temporary Social Security Number also known as an adoption tax payer identification number (ATIN) for a child without these documents for parents who are awaiting a Final Order of Adoption. They can claim the child as a dependent and take the child care credit if available. To obtain a ATIN, contact the IRS for Form W-7A. For more information, consult with your tax preparer.
For more information about Adoption or Contact Us.
A large portion of adoption expenses for a newborn are for medical costs. Most of the time there are insurance and/or other sources available, such as:
Although a birth parent may be covered by Medicaid/Healthy Start, there have been cases where the Department of Job & Family Services has denied or refused to pay for coverage or where the hospital/doctor has declined to accept Medicaid payment for medical services in an adoption. The rationale behind these occasional denials is that it is unfair to obligate taxpayers with the responsibility of paying for your adoption medicals.
If your insurance covers the child, determine whether coverage begins at birth or date of placement. Unfortunately, most policies only provide coverage effective as of date of placement which may affect payment of the hospital bill. Insurance coverage for adopted children should cover all pre-existing conditions as of the date of placement. Verification should be obtained in writing.
ERISA
Any group health insurance plan that provides coverage for dependent children should provide the same benefits to adopted children. Coverage should begin at time of placement and not be contingent on finalization of the adoption.
FAMILY LEAVE ACT
The Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) requires employers provide time off and continue benefits without risk to losing employment. For information on the FMLA to adoption, ask for a brochure from Resolve at 1310 Broadway, Somerville, MA 02144, Attention: FMLA Guide.
TAX DEDUCTION
Payment for the adoptive child’s medical costs may be deductible. See I.R.C. §152(b)(2), §213 and Kilpatrick v. Commissioner, 68 U.S.T.C. 469 (1977). Consult with your tax preparer.
For more information about Adoption or Contact Us.
Effective 4/7/09 House Bill 7 added birth mother’s living expenses to the list of approved payments connected with a child’s permanent surrender, placement, or adoption. The living expenses cannot exceed $3,000.00 and must be incurred during pregnancy and up to 60 days after the child is born. Payments from the petitioner to the birth mother for living expenses must be made through the attorney or agency arranging the adoption.
The total adoption costs depend strongly on insurance coverage. Almost always the birth mother has Medicaid/other insurance coverage and this usually dramatically reduces the estimated medical expenses. Also, the adoptive parents’ insurance usually covers the baby’s charges, further reducing the overall cost of an adoption closer to the average range of $8,000.00 – $15,000.00. In addition, the TAX CREDIT (see below) can reduce your overall adoption cost to virtually nothing!
Obviously, this could vary if the birth mother has no insurance coverage, has a c-section, delivers twins and/or is located out-of-state.
The Federal Adoption Tax Credit IS available to families having an Adjusted Gross Income of less than $182,520.00 annually in 2010. This may reduce the overall expense of an adoption by as much as $12,170.00. A partial credit is available for families with annual earnings up to $222,520.00. An additional $1,500.00 State Adoption Tax Credit may exist. If you earn more, you will not qualify for the credit. Although the credit generally is allowed for the year following the year in which the expenses are paid, a taxpayer who paid qualifying expenses in the current year for an adoption which became final in the current year, may be eligible to claim the credit on the current year return. Any unused portion of the FAT credit the year of the adoption can be carried forward and applied to future taxes for five years. See IRS Publication 968 entitled Tax Benefits for Adoption. The adoptive parents can also take $3,000.00 Child Credit for each child in the year adopted. Consult with your tax preparer.
The adoption tax credit has recently been expanded and increased. The new law increases the adoption tax credit and adoption assistance exclusion by $1,000.00, makes the credit refundable, and extends the credit through 2011. The increase is retroactive, meaning that any adoption occurring after January 1, 2010 is eligible for this higher credit. The credit is now refundable. This means that even families that owe zero taxes can receive the full tax credit in the form of a tax refund to help with their adoption-related expenses.
In the case Adoption of Infant Girl Banda, 53 Ohio App. 3d. 104 (Franklin Cty 1988), the Court stated. . . that the adoptive parents’ payment of fees should not be contingent upon the outcome of the adoption.
According to Ohio Revised Code §3107.055 all costs associated with adoption must be disclosed to the Court. According to DR 7-102(B)(2), an attorney is required to disclose fraud to a tribunal and may refuse to aid or participate in conduct believed to be unlawful despite obligations to represent the client zealously. In other words, passive participation by silence is not allowed.
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Nothing will ever be harder to do in your endeavor to adopt than to create a compassionate and effective Profile/Life-Book. You are not creating this to make you feel good about you. You are creating this to make the birth parents feel good about choosing you. Remember, a birth mother who places her child for adoption is making the ultimate sacrifice for her child, one that few of us would have the courage to make. A birth mother makes an adoption plan because she loves her baby, not because she is a bad person or an unfit parent. This act is the most unselfish, loving, caring and giving decision anyone could ever make.
The documents we provide at our first meeting may be included in your Profile/Life-Book. They should be typed and may have identifying/non-identifying information. You should also answer the Questionnaire and may write a Dear Birth Parent Letter. Give specific examples about each other and talk about each other. Preparing a Profile/Life-Book will provide prospective birth parent(s) with much more background information. The answers should be warm and address the points discussed in your material. When you are finished, read the Profile out loud to each other. You should also attach/incorporate photographs. Your Profile/Life-Book looks best when it reads, looks and feels like a magazine.
The Profile/Life-Book should project:
PROFILE/LIFE-BOOK UPDATES OR CHANGES
Keep in mind your Profile/Life-Book will be given to prospective birth parent(s). We ask you to be open and completely honest. If things change in your life, i.e. you get pregnant/have a baby, you must update your Profile/Life-Book. We cannot present an inaccurate Profile/Life-Book to birth parents. If your life changes (and it will), you must update your Profile/Life-Book so it is honest and accurate.
WILL BIRTH PARENTS CHOOSE YOU?
I have never had anyone not adopt who stuck with it. Every family will appeal to some birth parent. If you stick with it, you will become parents. Waiting for a birth parent to choose you may take longer if:
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Written by Molly Thorsen Connolly
Molly Connolly is a new parent after adopting a son with her husband, John, earlier this year. After years of trying to have a child, she and John found a birth mother through Facebook after discussing their struggle on the service. This is their story.
On Dec. 30 at 11 p.m., my husband and I were sitting in our basement watching TV. We were both feeling worn out and dejected and were trying to numb our anxiety. I had just recovered from the flu and was feeling guilty about not going home to spend time with my father, who was in the hospital following a serious brain injury and possibly would not live to see the New Year.
The decision to stay in Chicago, as opposed to traveling to Minnesota, was not just based on the fact that I was so sick that I could barely get out of bed. My husband and I were also in the process of adopting a baby boy who was due on Jan. 17. Just three months earlier, we had connected with our birth mother, Valerie, through a group we created on Facebook.
Over Christmas we spoke to Valerie, who had also been in the hospital and doctors were speculating that she might have Crohn’s disease. In addition to this diagnosis, which was causing her extreme discomfort and dehydration, the doctors were monitoring her for possible cervical cancer.
Since our communication with Valerie was sporadic at best, we had no idea how she was doing. She lived in Florida and we had only met her once. Recently, when she did contact us, sounding weak and in pain, she wouldn’t tell us how she was doing, but instead told us that the baby was OK. “Don’t worry about the baby, Molly,” she would say. “He’s fine. They keep checking him and there is nothing wrong with him.”
The only thing that might happen with the baby is the doctors might have to deliver him early. We felt horrible that we couldn’t do anything for Valerie and her pain all the way in Chicago, and we also knew that we might be called at any time to go to Florida.
While John was flipping channels, trying to find something else for us to watch, I struggled to give us both a pep talk.
“She said that at worst, the doctor will induce labor on Jan 25, and she then has a three-day waiting period before she can sign the papers. So, really within 28 days, we will know. We can wait 28 days, right? It’s been years. We can do 28 days,” I said.
I remember John staring at me. Usually at this point he would jump in and we would try to psych ourselves up. “Sure! 28 days! That’s nothing!” he would say.
But this time, he looked pensive. He looked sad. He took an audible deep breath. He looked directly at me, his blue eyes looked dark, his mouth turned down in a frown.
“Do we need to start talking about what we do if this falls through?” he asked.
I closed my eyes. I didn’t want to think about it. At this point, I thought my answer would be no. I didn’t think I could go through it again. The years of “trying”, the medical procedures, the miscarriage and the failed adoption a year before–it was too much.
I opened my eyes and was about to speak when the phone rang. We both jumped. John picked up the phone and checked the caller ID.
“It’s Michael!” he said. His eyes were wide with surprise. (Michael is Valerie’s stepfather who had been in touch with us throughout the adoption effort.)
“Pick it up!” I said. I gestured to the phone anxiously.
“Hello?” John answered. He put the phone on speaker.
“Are you ready to be a daddy?” Michael asked. His voice was filled with excitement and he continued, “Valerie is on her way to the hospital right now. I hope your bags are packed!”
After John hung up the phone, I wish I could have captured the look on both of our faces with words. I have never felt a jolt of relief, disbelief and utter wonder all at once. We both started laughing.
“Really? Is this really it?” I finally said.
In the next few minutes we had a flurry of additional phone calls from Michael and a call from Valerie’s mother, Dawn, who we later learned was driving 90 miles per hour in order to get to the hospital. We could hear Valerie in the background moaning in pain and then Dawn held the phone up so we could hear Valerie.
“I’m sorry!” she wailed. “I wanted you to be here but I’m not gonna make it! I’m so sorry!” She screamed between waves of pain.
“Honey! Just get the hospital and don’t you think twice about us. We are on our way and we’ll get there as soon as we can!”
As soon as we hung up, the whole situation became a comedy routine. We both jumped up and kept bumping into each other.
“You check flights!”
“I’ll pack!”
“Call Patrick about the dogs!”
“We need that car seat from Ann!”
“What are we going to do about our car?”
John called and woke up his 20-year-old nephew who hopped in his car without a second thought to come take care of the house and dogs. I ran around upstairs packing for us, my mind completely blank on what to pack for a three-week trip to Florida in January.
When I arrived in Florida, I opened my suitcase to find not one, but two bathing suits, two wool sweaters, two T-shirts (again for 21 days), 13 pairs of black socks and little else.
John booked two one-way tickets for us to Orlando at a reasonable price.
“Honey this is great,” I said as I looked at the one-way, direct flights. “Except it is for NEXT WEEK!” We scrambled to rebook.
Since the baby would only be 3 weeks old when we left Orlando, we were advised that even if an airline would let him fly, it was not safe to fly with him especially because it was the height of flu season.
We sent a text message to our neighbor who came by at midnight with a car seat for us. We called John’s sister and asked her if she and her husband would drive our car to Orlando if we flew them home. They said yes without the slightest hesitation.
And then at 1 a.m., the phone rang again, and it was Michael. “Check your email mom and dad. I just sent you a picture of your baby boy!”
Epilogue
The most amazing thing for John and me was the flurry of excitement and joy in the days that followed. The core of our story however, is that our birth mother, the woman who brought our darling son into our lives, found us on Facebook.
In marketing ourselves as adoptive parents, we created a group on Facebook in July of 2009 called, “John and Molly looking to Adopt” and we asked our friends and family to join. Our Facebook group linked to our adoption website, www.johnandmolly.net, as well as to our adoption agency.
Back in October, when Valerie decided she was going to place her child for adoption, she asked her mother to assist her in finding a family. Her mother, Dawn, searched for “looking to adopt” and our Facebook group came up in her web search results.
From there, Dawn was able to see our group and link to our page, and subsequently recommend us to Valerie.
Looking back, it’s clear the availability of our public Facebook group in search engines was a key ingredient to our success. But more than that, Facebook provided a way for Dawn and Valerie to see more about who we were because we were open about some information about ourselves on our profiles
They were able to see that we had over 150 friends who supported our adoption efforts and were rooting for us to be parents. They were able to read on the group page about how difficult it had been for us when an earlier adoption fell through, and see how our friends had posted encouragement and support to keep trying.
And when the wonderful day came, when Valerie placed her baby boy in our arms and entrusted us to raise him, we were able to share the good news and pictures instantly with our dear friends on Facebook.
When we returned home to Chicago there were dozens of cards and presents waiting for us. The most amazing thing to me is this event put me in touch with friends from every phase of our lives who were watching the news unfold on Facebook—elementary school through college, previous work colleagues , clients, neighbors, even complete strangers who were friends of friends.
The community of support we achieved, using Facebook, is not just what helped us to find our birthmother, but also what provided us the emotional support to continue our adoption efforts in the first place.
We are grateful to our friends and family, and the wonderful people at Family Resource Center in Chicago and Heart of Adoptions in Florida . We are thankful that we live in an age where communication helped make our miracle come true.
For more information about Adoption or Contact Us.
Before a child can be placed in a home the prospective adoptive parent(s) must be investigated and pre-approved through a home study. In private adoption, this is usually done by the Probate Court in the county of residence of either the adoptive parents or the birth parent or by a licensed agency if this is an agency adoption. Some Probate Courts accept an agency home study.
A Preplacement Application will be completed with references that are unrelated and able to comment about your ability to be an adoptive parent. After the Preplacement document is completed, it is usually signed in the presence of a Notary.
Also letters of recommendation, preferably from individuals not listed on the Preplacement Application, should address:
The Probate Court/Agency requires you and any other adult household member have a physical exam within the last year. Please obtain a letter from your physician regarding your health or have the provided medical form completed.
Ohio law requires a criminal background check for every adult household member. All requests for Ohio civilian background checks be submitted electronically through use of WebCheck or other approved methods. There is a $22.00 charge per person for the search. The results take approximately thirty (30) days. There are more than 400 WebCheck locations now available to persons seeking background checks. These locations are listed by county on the Attorney General’s website at:
http://www.ohioattorneygeneral.gov/Services/Business/WebCheck/Webcheck-Community-Listing
You may go to the location nearest you to have your fingerprints scanned. Please then have them forward the results to our office as soon as possible.
Ohio Revised Code §2151.86 requires that anyone who has not lived within the State of Ohio for a consecutive five-year period must also have a nationwide background search through the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Electronic FBI submissions can be processed more quickly. The locations mentioned in the website above will indicate whether they can perform an FBI webcheck at that location. There is a $24.00 charge per person for the FBI search.
Convictions for felonies, drug offenses, or sex related charges could preclude a parent from adopting, even if these convictions have been expunged. See Ohio Revised Code §2151.86. If you have been charged, convicted or expunged of any crime, you must disclose this information to our office.
After we receive all of the above documents, they are filed with the Probate Court. Shortly thereafter the Court case worker will call to arrange a home study investigation by a convenient personal visit to review your Preplacement Application, physical and mental health, emotional stability, employment history, and financial matters to determine if a proposed placement would be in a child’s best interest. This may be required even though you may have had a home study on file in another county Probate Court or done by an agency.
If all is well, the Court will approve you as prospective adoptive parent(s) usually within 15 or 30 days. Some Probate Courts will accept another Probate Court’s home study or an agency home study. The Home Study is valid for up to two years. However if you do not adopt within the first fourteen (14) months, it may need to be updated when you do go to adopt your child, with an additional filing fee at that time.
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Joliet birth mother wants best for her newborn daughter
By DENISE M. BARAN-UNLAND For Sun-Times Media
It never occurred to Barb, 22 of Joliet, not to breast-feed her daughter, even though another family was adopting the baby.
After participating in the Will County Health Department’s WIC (Women, Infants and Children) program, Barb, who wishes to remain anonymous, attended the program’s breast-feeding classes and learned of the health benefits of breast-feeding for baby and mother.
So after Barb gave birth on April 30, she nursed her baby for three days then put her in the arms of the adoptive mother.
Barb continues to pump and dump her milk. She hopes she can find a nearby milk bank that will want her milk.
“There are plenty of babies who need breast milk, but their mothers either can’t or won’t nurse,” Barb said.
Decision questioned
Plenty of well-meaning people criticized her decision to briefly nurse a baby she would not raise.
“They thought breast-feeding would create an emotional bond that would make it harder to give her up,” Barb said. “But I’d been carrying her inside me for nine months. I felt her moving around inside me. That bond was already there.”
Barb and her boyfriend were only 21 when they learned she was pregnant. Both were working. Barb was also taking online classes to become a pharmacy technician. Neither one, Barb felt, was mature enough to provide high-quality parenting to an infant.
“A lot of pregnant 16-year-olds keep their babies, but they want to hang out with their friends all the time,” Barb said. “I think you give up that right when you become a mother.”
Adoption debate
Supporting a baby required making tough choices. Barb would have to quit her job; her boyfriend would have to work two jobs; or they both would work and leave the baby’s care to a succession of friends and relatives. None of the options settled with Barb.
Barb also feared the stress of raising a baby, along with reduced sleep and income, would lead to arguments over parenting styles and their loss of independence.
To prove her point, Barb set her alarm clock to every two hours around the clock and discovered she was not emotionally ready for that lifestyle.
“It would not have been right to keep her,” Barb said. “I love my daughter very much and so does my boyfriend, but we couldn’t be happier for her. Sometimes I get an emotional rush and start crying, but I know we made the right choice.”
Choosing right family
Barb knew adoption was not a dismal option. Her mother grew up with adopted parents.
Barb particularly wanted her daughter to experience a childhood similar to her own, so she requested the baby be adopted by a Catholic family. Equally satisfying for Barb is that the family has a 4-year-old girl; Barb and her sister were four years apart.
With an open adoption arrangement, Barb, as birth mother, is still an active member of the baby’s family. She’s just not the parent who rears the baby.
For pregnant women unable to responsibly raise a baby, Barb highly recommends open adoption. “Adoption is no longer good-bye forever,” she said.
For more information about Adoption or Contact Us.
Written by Doris O’Brien
How many times have parents in a fit of exasperation told disobedient children “I’d like to send you back!” The only catch is that there’s no place to send them, except up to their room or into a corner.
Apparently, that wasn’t a problem for Torry Hansen of Tennessee. Eight months into an exhausting struggle with her adopted 7-year-old Russian son, whom she named Jared, Ms. Hansen had had quite enough. For $200 she arranged with airline personnel to see that the recalcitrant kid was flown back to Moscow and met there by someone of authority. (TV footage of Jared in Russia showed him about as fazed by all of this as Macaulay Culkin in “Home Alone!”)
A friend of mine, concerned that her young teen-aged grandson was planning to travel to Chicago alone, asked me what I thought of the little boy sent back unaccompanied to his native Russia. I said there must have been another way to handle the situation. She agreed.
But not everyone does. Another local teacher/grandmother believes there are times when a strange child gets so obstreperous as to be a danger, and that those who handled the adoption surely noticed such tendencies without alerting Ms. Hansen.
No child is guaranteed, whether adopted or birthed. And every parent-child relationship is unique. What distinguishes this one from others, however, is that it caused an avalanche of Soviet anger against America. The incident may now be old news, but it still festers, and will likely bring about changes in the Russian government’s policy for future international adoptions — if any are even permitted.
The trouble is, however, that Russia has an estimated 740,000 orphans, and the natives aren’t taking in enough of them. Americans adopted over 1,500 Russian children in 2009, the largest number after China and Ethiopia. Presumably, most of these adoptions turned out well. But whenever a problem develops, others seem to come to light, like the never-ending procession of Tiger Woods’ romantic partners.
It’s been revealed, for example, that 14 Russian kids adopted by American families have died of abuse since 1996. The fact that many American children suffered the same fate, and that even a larger percentage of orphans were abused by Russian families does not mitigate the tragedy. To some degree, we expect a higher standard of behavior from those who consciously make the effort to bring a child from elsewhere into their lives.
Finding suitable homes for orphaned kids is hard enough. But an added complication is that many Russian orphans suffer from fetal alcohol syndrome. In a past column I wrote about the excessive consumption of vodka in Russia, a dangerous habit that is spreading among our own young people. Babies born with this disease unwittingly suffer the sins of their parents, making them harder to place in adoptive homes. Often the child’s symptoms may not even be revealed for fear of rejection.
That’s basically the argument of Torry Hansen, who blames the WACAP adoption agency for not leveling with her. The agency, in turn, insists that its clients are fully informed about those they adopt, and that Ms. Hansen could have sought help from a stateside representative, rather than take the drastic measure she did. Admittedly, there is little follow-up on adoptions once a child ships out of Russia.
Adoption has always been regarded as a noble act. At its best it brings love, a sense of belonging, and greater opportunity to unclaimed children. Incidents such as the return of Jared — and the attempt of unauthorized church members to spirit children out of earthquake-ravaged Haiti — have unfairly given a bad name to adoption by Americans.
As a result of Torry Hansen’s actions, Russian agencies are keeping some 3,000 American families in limbo about the status of adoptions already in progress. Perhaps if the laws of our own land involved less red tape for adopting U.S. children, there might be fewer reasons for our citizens to face the Red Menace abroad.
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Ohio House Bill 411 would amend Ohio adoption law to allow an adult to be adopted if the adult is the child of the spouse of the adoption petitioner and the adult consents to the adoption.
Currently, Ohio adoption law says that an adult can be adopted if the adult is disabled, mentally retarded, had a foster child care giver or child step-parent relationship with the adopters as a minor, of if he or she were in the permanent custody of a children services agency at the time he or she turned 18 and consents to the adoption.
In some situations after a couple marries they may want to combine their families. Under current Ohio adoption law, the other spouse’s adult child cannot be adopted if they were 18 at the time of the marriage. If, for example, a husband and wife get married and one spouse wants to adopt the children of the other and the other spouse might have some children that are minors and some that are adults, only the minor children could be adopted and not the adult children. Or, if a spouse remarries and changes her name, she may wish to have her minor children adopted and their names and birth certificates would be changed. However, if there was an adult child in this scenario, the adult child would be excluded and left out.
This pending legislation would cure this defect in Ohio’s adoption laws.
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Daytime Columbus Interview regarding navigating the foreign adoption process
Posted: Jan 08, 2009 on NewsChannel10.com
Texas boasts one of the highest teen pregnancy rates in the nation, and more of those teen moms are opting to keep their baby.
Nationwide, including the Texas Panhandle, adoption rates are at their lowest ever, with fewer than two percent of pregnant girls choosing to go that route. Catholic Family Services says they think part of the reason teens are choosing to keep their child is because there is not the teen pregnancy stigma there once was. Perhaps another reason… Teen pregnancy is often glamorized in the media, with more and more young, unwed movie stars having children.
Adoption Supervisor Holly Campidilli says, “these babies still cry, they still get sick, they still need formula, they still need diapers, and a lot of teens and single parents aren’t in the situations that these stars are in with a lot of resources, so definitely I think they’re seeing the positive.” The latest teen birth rate numbers we have are from 2006, but in that year, there were 63 births for every 1000 women, between the ages of 15 and 19.
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AJC investigation: Weak oversight on private adoption agencies
By Alan Judd, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
She was 24, a fair-skinned, curly haired brunette from California’s San Joaquin Valley. She quit school after the 11th grade but wanted to go back to become a teacher or maybe a corrections officer. She said she liked “shopping, swimming, going out.” Her favorite food: Mexican. Her favorite places: the mountains and the beach. She smoked while she was pregnant.
For Krista and Luis Arduz, she represented their best hope for a baby.
Early last year, the Kentucky couple agreed to adopt the California woman’s infant through a Georgia adoption agency. Like many modern private adoptions, this was to be a complex multi-state transaction, conducted mostly through e-mails and cellphones, Web sites and text messages — not to mention wire transfers involving thousands of dollars.
And the way it unraveled sheds light on the state’s weak oversight of the 336 private agencies that arrange adoptions and foster care and operate group homes in Georgia, an investigation by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution shows.
Just three times since 2008, the Journal-Constitution found, has the state imposed penalties against agencies that exclusively handle adoptions: two fines and one license revocation.
The newspaper’s review of more than 1,500 reports of inspections and investigations found that regulators repeatedly forgave violations of rules fundamental to safe adoptions: failing to check parents’ criminal records, for instance, or not documenting safe environments in adoptive homes.
Several agencies received citations for failing to show that payments to birth mothers covered only legitimate medical or living expenses. At least one agency — Valley of Hope Adoption Inc. of Woodstock, with which the Arduzes worked — was cited for having money for a birth mother’s expenses deposited into its executive director’s personal bank account.
None of those violations resulted in penalties.
State law allows fines as high as $25,000. But officials say they prefer to persuade agencies to comply with the rules than impose harsh penalties.
“We try to work with as many agencies as possible so there are viable options for Georgia’s children,” said Keith Bostick, director of the Office of Residential Child Care, which regulates adoption and foster care agencies.
“It is a balancing act,” Bostick said. “Often it’s not black, it’s not white — it’s gray.”
Valley of Hope is one of many agencies that existed in the gray area.
The agency eluded punishment for almost two years, even though state officials knew it was violating adoption rules. But the state didn’t share information about the agency with the public until late 2009.
Erin Chaffee, Valley of Hope’s founder and executive director, declined repeated requests for an interview. In an e-mail to a reporter late Friday, she said, “Adoption is a highly personal and confidential business and for those reasons it is not appropriate for me to engage in a discussion with you.” In another e-mail Saturday, she added, “We have helped over 100 clients adopt successfully and only a handful of clients have had failed adoptions.”
The Arduzes knew nothing about Valley of Hope’s regulatory history when they made the first of several payments that were to total more than $31,000. Neither did Brea and Jonathan Freeman, a Nashville-area couple whose own attempt to adopt through Valley of Hope overlapped the Arduzes’.
In late 2008, the Freemans decided to expand their family of three biological children and one adopted child. They considered several adoption agencies before settling on one that had only recently gone into business: Valley of Hope.
“We found them on the Internet,” Brea Freeman said recently. “I could find nothing bad about them, at the time.”
‘Free gift’
Valley of Hope broke the rules even before it completed its first adoption.
Chaffee, a licensed social worker who had worked for another adoption agency, established Valley of Hope in January 2008 as a for-profit business. State law requires adoption agencies to operate as not-for-profit organizations to guard against the appearance of baby selling.
Chaffee accepted the agency’s first adoption application fee from prospective parents in June 2008 — two months before Valley of Hope received a state license allowing it to do so, records show. In her e-mail Saturday, Chaffee said regulators “had trouble understanding” that she was working with those parents through a separate consulting company.
As at other agencies, an adoption handled by Valley of Hope could be expensive — $40,000 or more — and lacking guarantees. Birth mothers may change their minds at any time, leaving adoptive parents with little to show for their financial and emotional investments.
But on Valley of Hope’s Web site, Chaffee reassures both prospective parents and birth mothers. She describes Valley of Hope as a Christian mission offering the “free gift” of “everlasting life.” All children, the Web site states, are “wonderfully made by the Creator.”
Elsewhere Chaffee takes a more secular tone:
“So many couples come to us after spending a lot of money on their adoption without success, or they tell us they have been waiting forever to adopt and nothing has panned out,” Chaffee writes. By working with birth mothers in “states that have favorable adoption laws,” she says, prospective parents could expect a “match” in four to six months — half as long as at many other agencies.
On the Web site, several clients praise Chaffee and her agency.
“We were so happy with the level of personal service and support we were given at Valley of Hope,” a couple identified as Paul and Miriam of New Jersey say. “Erin was always available to talk to us, and seemed almost as excited as we were about the whole process. We could not believe that she found us a match after TWO WEEKS!!”
Another couple, identified as Pamela and Jason from Canada, wrote to Chaffee: “When we contacted you, we had come close to losing the dream of becoming parents. Now the pain is almost forgotten.”
‘My baby’
Krista and Luis Arduz also dreamed of becoming parents once more.
But Krista, a physician’s assistant in a dermatology practice, was in her 40s, and her last pregnancy and delivery had been difficult. She feared she would not be able to conceive again. Adoption, she said recently, seemed the best alternative.
In early 2009, the Arduzes hired an adoption facilitator to help sort through the Internet’s hundreds of posted “situations” — pregnant women offering their babies for adoption. The couple settled on what seemed to be a good match: a baby due April 17 to a 24-year-old California woman offering her child for adoption through Valley of Hope.
Chaffee faxed the Arduzes a contract, which they signed Feb. 13, 2009, the same day they wired $12,500 to Valley of Hope for the adoption fee. A few hours later, Krista Arduz said, Chaffee wanted another $2,000 sent immediately for the birth mother’s expenses. It was Friday afternoon, too late to send the money from the Arduzes’ credit union. Chaffee wouldn’t wait, Krista said. So the Arduzes wired the money from a Western Union outlet.
The birth mother, by then seven months pregnant and living on food stamps and Medicaid, remained in her small, remote hometown. She was married and had two boys, a 3-year-old and a 10-month-old. Her husband, who was not the father of her sons or the unborn child, did not know she planned to give up the baby, she wrote in a birth-mother questionnaire that Valley of Hope shared with the Arduzes. The biological father, whom she knew only as “Joe,” wasn’t aware of her pregnancy.
The birth-mother form posed a question: “If you could, what would you tell the baby about yourself and your decision?”
She answered: “I love you and I think I did what was best for the future of child.”
The next question: “Why are you placing this child for adoption?”
Her response: “I am not in any way financially stable or in the position to bring a baby into this world to suffer because I can’t provide.”
Still, she wrote that although she would allow the adoptive parents into the delivery room, she wanted to hold the baby first and to spend time alone with the child. She said she would let the adoptive parents name the child, so long as they told her what they planned to call “my baby.”
From the start, Krista Arduz said, everything was complicated and confusing. The Arduzes had so many questions: When should they buy airline tickets to pick up the baby in California? How long should they expect to stay there? What kind of relationship might they have with the mother?
“No guidance,” Arduz said of Valley of Hope’s responses to their inquiries.
“It would be nothing to call them two or three times and never hear back from them,” she said. “We were very frustrated.”
Cautionary tale
In Nashville, Brea and Jonathan Freeman were frustrated, too. When they began working with Valley of Hope in late 2008, they had been impressed. Brea Freeman had imagined Chaffee as someone who could be a close friend if they lived in the same city. And Chaffee had called frequently with possible adoption matches, exuding what Freeman called “a sense of urgency.”
But, she said, Chaffee began asking whether the Freemans might exceed their self-imposed $20,000 cap on adoption expenses. After they said no, Brea Freeman said, they heard from Chaffee less often, a criticism made by others in complaints to state regulators. “If there was a chance you might be willing to spend money,” Freeman said, “she would call you back in 30 seconds.”
Freeman took copious notes of her conversations with Chaffee and saved dozens of e-mails. Her documentation, which she shared with a reporter, depicts an increasingly muddled and contentious adoption.
The Freemans thought they had been “matched” with a birth mother in Atlanta. Valley of Hope later told the couple the match had been only preliminary.
By early April, the Freemans were worried. The birth mother’s due date came and went. Chaffee was supposed to arrange a telephone conference call between the birth mother and the Freemans, but that fell through. Communication from Chaffee became less frequent.
“When you get matched with somebody, it’s like being pregnant and waiting to give birth,” Brea Freeman said. “To pull the rug out from under us, it was devastating.”
On April 5, Chaffee e-mailed the Freemans to say the birth mother was waffling. But she said she hoped to keep the adoption on track by acting “more like a friend” to her, and reminding her that by keeping the baby, she would forfeit the money for her expenses.
“She made comments like, ‘I have to do the plan,’ meaning the adoption plan, and then later said, ‘I really don’t want to give up my baby,’” Chaffee wrote in an e-mail to Freeman. “I explained to her in great detail about the benefits of an open adoption.”
Freeman felt uncomfortable with Chaffee’s strategy. The next day, she and her husband backed out of the adoption.
The woman kept her baby. After Freeman complained about the outcome, a Valley of Hope caseworker sent her an e-mail describing the woman as “not stable,” adding that her erratic nature was why the agency had not asked the couple to pay fees in advance.
By e-mail on Saturday, Chaffee said: “I have never pressured a birth parent to place a child.”
Freeman discussed the episode at length on her blog. She sees it as a cautionary tale.
“I couldn’t imagine,” she said, “looking my child in the eye one day and saying, ‘You know, the agency pressured your mom to give you up.’”
‘Everything was fine’
The Arduzes’ birth mother was due April 17. Krista Arduz booked a flight for April 15, reserved a room in the town’s new Holiday Inn Express, and waited for word about the woman’s latest visit with her doctor.
With five days to go, Luis Arduz e-mailed Chaffee: “I wanted to inquire if you have had contact … after her doctor appointment.”
Chaffee replied from her BlackBerry: “Her mom told me everything was fine at the appt, but no details.”
That weekend, the Arduzes got a call from a California lawyer who was handling legal work on the adoption. He had just heard that the baby had arrived at least a week earlier — and the birth mother had backed out of the adoption.
The child was born, the lawyer told the Arduzes, before Chaffee purportedly spoke with the woman’s mother.
The news enraged the Arduzes. Why, they wondered, had Chaffee not told them about the birth? Did she even know about the baby? If so, why had she misled them about the birth mother’s appointment with the doctor?
Chaffee says that when birth mothers change their minds, “the adoptive parents are notified as soon as the agency has confirmation of the decision.”
Regardless, last April 13, a Monday, Krista Arduz sent Chaffee a seemingly innocuous e-mail: “Wondering if you talked with [the birth mother] to find out about her visit to the hospital this past week. We’re anxiously waiting to know how she’s doing and would appreciate any info you have (even if you haven’t spoken with her).”
Chaffee wrote back: “I spoke with her Tuesday and everything was good. … Her doctor’s office said there was no new information since her last visit.”
On the telephone that evening, Luis Arduz confronted Chaffee about the mother’s decision. Chaffee, the Arduzes say, repeatedly said she didn’t know what she could have done differently.
Luis Arduz was incredulous.
“You,” he asked Chaffee, “are the last one to know?”
No evidence of fraud
Later in the month, Krista Arduz filed a complaint against Valley of Hope with Georgia regulators. Already, they were looking into a similar case that had been reported in March.
It wasn’t until July 7, though, that an inspector visited the adoption agency’s offices in Cherokee County.
Generally corroborating the Arduzes’ allegations, the inspector found numerous rules violations: a failure to document why money was wired to birth mothers, the depositing of mothers’ expense money into Chaffee’s bank account, a variable fee schedule that suggested different prices for different babies.
Other citations alleged that Valley of Hope had not adequately screened adoptive families. For instance, the agency didn’t check whether at least one prospective parent had a criminal record, didn’t document another’s mental health evaluation and could not show it had confirmed the character references for a third.
And, the inspector said, Valley of Hope still was operating illegally as a for-profit adoption agency. (It changed its corporate registration to non-profit in December 2009, records show.)
But the inspector recommended no punishment; she found no evidence of fraud, and concluded the agency had not intentionally broken rules.
Chaffee now denies violating the rules, although she never contested state citations.
By this February, officials determined Valley of Hope had neither corrected deficiencies nor submitted a plan to do so. “All of it added up to something that didn’t look right,” said Bostick, the chief state regulator.
On Feb. 15, the state revoked Valley of Hope’s license.
As far as Bostick is concerned, the agency is out of business. But its Web site is still active. It is advertising three “situations” to prospective parents on adoption sites, although Chaffee says her company is accepting no new clients. Regardless, she continues to operate her separate adoption consulting firm.
A closed chapter
The failed adoptions left the Freemans and the Arduzes in different places.
The Freemans worked with another agency, in Houston, and adopted a child later last year.
The Arduzes hired a lawyer to request a refund from Valley of Hope. Finally, they got back $3,000, half the money they had paid for the birth mother’s expenses. But they still are out $15,500.
With that, the Arduzes gave up on adoption.
“We lost so much money that I’m still paying for,” Krista Arduz said. “We sort of closed that chapter.”
Shortly after the adoption fell through, Arduz’s appendix ruptured. In bed for weeks with plenty of time to think, she wrote a letter to Chaffee — “woman to woman, mother to mother,” she said. She asked for a full refund, or at least an apology.
She never heard back.
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By Jeb Phillips with The Columbus Dispatch
Irina Palmer, 10, survived her experience with her first adoptive parents, Gary and Amy Thompson, but her adoptive brother, Liam, did not.
These are the facts in the murder of 3-year-old Liam Thompson:
Gary and Amy Thompson of the Far West Side traveled to eastern Russia in April 2003 to adopt a little girl and a little boy. They already had two biological children – one together, another from Amy’s first marriage – and wanted to expand their family.
By summer, the Thompsons were sick of the adopted kids, according to a diary that Amy kept. Even though they weren’t biological siblings, Amy wrote of them as a pair. Liam had a cleft lip and palate that had been badly repaired in Russia. Amy wrote that she felt nothing but indifference toward the girl.
She and her husband had considered getting rid of the adopted children “like dogs in a pound,” she wrote.
On Oct. 11, 2003, Gary put Liam into a 140-degree bath and held him there while he struggled. Amy, a licensed practical nurse, was at work at a nursing home. The Thompsons never took Liam to a doctor or a hospital for his severe burns.
During the next five days, as the boy’s skin peeled off, Gary kept Liam on a mattress in the basement. He died on Oct. 16, his third birthday.
Gary Thompson, now 38, pleaded guilty to murder and was sentenced to 15 years to life in prison. Amy Thompson, now 39, pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter and endangering children and was sentenced to 14 years.
The older of Amy’s biological children went to a foster family. The younger went with relatives. But there was a little Russian girl in that household, too, the one adopted with Liam.
The girl’s name never became public in all of the media coverage of the case. Investigators said she wasn’t abused, but the Thompsons had neglected her. She was small and weak. Columbus homicide detective Patrick Dorn, who handled the case, remembered her as “abnormally withdrawn.”
Her name – once Irina Alexandrovna Pavlova, then Irina Thompson – is now Irina Elizabeth Jean Palmer. She’s 10 years old and is so strong that she can push herself up from a headstand to a handstand. She’ll let you feel her biceps, just for extra proof.
Pink is her favorite color. She wants to be a veterinarian or a zookeeper. She once ate five clementine oranges in a single sitting. She likes Taylor Swift.
“And Justin Bieber,” says her sister Cache Palmer, 9.
“And Miley Cyrus,” says her other sister, Jessica Palmer, also 9.
The Palmer girls are not about to let one sister talk without chiming in. While Irina answered questions on Wednesday evening about her favorite sports – lacrosse and gymnastics – Cache left the room for a minute and then reported that the girls have 32 trophies among them. Jessica said one of her trophies is the shiniest.
Don and Nadine Palmer already had adopted Jessica and were foster parents to Cache when Irina arrived at their Powell home in November 2003. Liam had died about three weeks earlier. Irina was about to turn 4.
Don, who is now 57, has two older children from a previous marriage. He thought, once upon a time, that that was plenty. The girls make fun of him for that now.
A caseworker with Franklin County Children Services who knew the Palmers thought they might be a good fit for Irina. Don, a retired manager for UPS, is the quiet, big-lug type. Nadine, 52, who once worked as a paralegal, smiles and laughs and talks every bit as much as her girls.
“They just have this warmth and this love,” said Thomas Taneff, the Columbus lawyer who handled the adoption case.
When they heard Irina’s story, the Palmers wanted to take care of her.
Russian adoptions occasionally end in horror stories like Liam’s, say Taneff and others who deal with them. Russia threatened to suspend adoptions to the United States this month after an adoptive mother from Tennessee put her 7-year-old on a plane, alone, back to Russia. She sent a note with him saying that he had psychological problems and she no longer wanted him.
Barb VanSlyck, a Columbus-based adoption counselor, said some Russian children develop emotional problems living in orphanages, and adoptive parents might not realize that. Health records and information about biological parents can be spotty and don’t prepare adoptive parents for the difficulties they might face, VanSlyck and others said.
In her diary, Amy Thompson wrote of Liam and Irina that “I am mad at them for being so much damn work, (angry) at them for not just fitting in and for having no personality.”
Irina was sweet from the time she joined the Palmer family, but she wasn’t affectionate the way Jessica and Cache were, her mother said. Jessica and Cache have been in the Palmer family since they were babies. For a long time, Irina didn’t quite trust that the Palmers were her “forever family,” her parents said.
She constantly seeks out people, making new friends, looking for more attachments, Nadine said. Before Irina talked about her favorite color and the sports she plays, she talked about her best friend, Haley, and a lot of her other friends. The next day, she got her mom to e-mail the names of friends she had forgotten to mention.
Irina also wants to know about her “tummy mommy” and what she looked like as a baby. The Palmers have no pictures of her before she came to them and not much information about her family in Russia.
But she knows that she is a Palmer now, and a gymnast, and a lover of sleepovers with her friends. Her parents call her “Irina Beana” and “Bean Bag.” Her father has laid down the law for all of the girls – no boyfriends until they’re 19.
“We’ll see how that goes,” he said. He sounded hopeless.
Irina remembers Liam. She remembers the basement he was kept in after he was burned. Nadine used to walk by the girls’ room and overhear Jessica and Cache:
“Tell us about Liam,” they would say.
Irina also remembers Amy and Gary Thompson. She knows what they did.
When their names come up, her parents – who have raised Irina and the two other girls to be cartwheeling, chattering, loving daughters – try to focus on the good.
“We always say that if Amy and Gary hadn’t gone to Russia, we wouldn’t have Irina,” Nadine said.
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Budget cuts to Ohio’s adoption services will make it more difficult for the 3,000 children who need an adoptive home.
The state budget signed by Gov. Ted Strickland cut $43 million (or 40%) from adoption services, decreasing financial assistance and training available to prospective adoptive parents.
The most damaging cut removed the state Website that displayed photos of foster children and stories about them. The Website is one of the most effective tools. Because we live in a technological society, most prospective parents use the Website to find out about potential children available for adoption or foster care. The State Website has been replaced by a directory of county agencies.
Many adopted children have special needs and go to families of modest incomes. The cuts will decrease adoption as an alternative to foster care, which costs taxpayers significantly more. Cuts in subsidies to parents who adopt are also likely to decrease adoptions.
Thomas Taneff was admitted to the Ohio Bar in 1988 and has been practicing law for 22 years. He is a graduate of The Ohio State University and Capital University Law School. Mr. Taneff was a Judicial Law Clerk and Franklin County Probate Court Magistrate. He practices in the areas of estates, probate, estate planning, guardianships, adoption and surrogacy throughout the State of Ohio, including interstate and international adoptions. He has handled more than 2,000 adoption cases and was awarded the United States Congressional Adoption Award in 2005. He is also the Macedonian Honorary Consul to the United States.
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No. You are never too old to adopt. Anyone who is legally competent and at least 18 years of age or older is eligible to adopt. In fact an age limit on adoptive parents has long since been repealed.
The age of prospective adoptive parents has been creeping up as baby boomers put off having children until they either finish school or got into their careers. Also, many prospective adoptive parents didn’t find their present partners until later in life.
One of the advantages of adopting later in life is that older parents can offer emotional and financial stability.
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In 1999, the Texas legislature enacted the first law addressing infant abandonment. Nicknamed “Baby Moses laws” after the biblical story of Baby Moses whose mother placed him in a wicker basket to save him from death, infant safe haven laws have been enacted in roughly 47 states and Puerto Rico. The purpose of safe haven laws is to encourage parents who abandon their child to leave the infant with persons who can provide the care needed for their safety and well being.
Ohio’s Safe Haven Law
No two state safe haven laws are exactly the same. Safe haven laws vary in the maximum age at which an infant can be surrendered, who may surrender an infant, and to whom the infant can be surrendered. Most states exempt parents who safely surrender their infant from criminal liability by either declining to prosecute a parent for child abandonment or providing that the surrender of a child under these circumstances is an affirmative defense in any prosecution of the parent or his/her agent for any crime such as abandonment or neglect against the child.
In Ohio, an infant who is thirty days old or younger may be voluntarily surrendered by that child’s parent to a peace officer, hospital employee, or an emergency medical service worker. Prior to the enactment of Amended Senate Bill 304 of the 127th General Assembly, Ohio would only permit an infant seventy-two hours or younger to be voluntarily surrendered without the threat of criminal penalties. The intent of the bill, which became effective on March 24, 2009, was to allow a parent more time to safely surrender the infant rather than abandon the infant under unsafe conditions or subject the infant to potential abuse or neglect.
Unless the infant has been surrendered in a condition that reasonably indicates abuse or neglect, the parent who delivers the child is not guilty of a criminal offense, is not subject to criminal prosecution, and has the right to remain anonymous. Once the child is delivered, a rebuttable presumption is established that it is not in the child’s best interest to return to the child’s natural parents.
The safe haven provider (i.e., peace officer, hospital employee, or emergency medical services worker) to whom the child is delivered is required to perform any act necessary to protect the child’s health or safety and must notify the local public children services agency that a surrendered infant is in their possession. The provider cannot coerce the parent to reveal the identity of both parents or pursue or follow the parent after the child has been delivered. If possible, the provider can make available to the parent forms that are intended to collect medical information, as well as provide written materials that describe services that are available to assist parents and newborns, but cannot force the parent to complete the forms or take the written materials.
The public children services agency takes emergency temporary custody of the infant and must prepare case plans, conduct investigations, conduct periodic administrative reviews of case plans, and provide services for the surrendered child as if the child were adjudicated a neglected child. The infant may then be eligible for placement in foster care and ultimately for adoption.
Criticism of Safe Haven Laws
While safe haven laws appear to be a safe and humane response to the problem of child abandonment, they are not without their critics. Safe haven laws have been seen as a “band-aid approach” to a much larger problem. Many child welfare experts, for instance, cite the lack of a comprehensive strategy for the prevention of infant abandonment and the need to integrate these laws into a much larger effort to improve services for those women most at risk of abandoning their child.
Others question the effect on fathers’ rights. The abeyance of criminal prosecution and the anonymity enjoyed by the abandoning parent or their agent can often conflict with the rights of the other parent. The father may not even know that he is a parent or that the mother is abandoning the child. Critics believe that safe haven laws should provide the unwed father his due process rights to notice and an opportunity to be heard.
Some adoption advocates have their reservations about safe haven laws as well. Safe haven providers cannot compel an abandoning parent to disclose family and medical history information and the lack of this information can affect the child’s adoption prospects later on.
Others believe that these laws encourage abandonment by women who would not do so otherwise because it seems easier or less invasive than receiving counseling, help with parenting skills, or making an adoption plan. Safe haven laws have been said to propagate “baby dumps” by making it convenient for mothers to abandon their infants and shirk their responsibility. It is thought that these laws send a signal that there is no need to assume responsibility for actions taken and that discarding one’s child is acceptable behavior.
The most damning indictment of safe have laws is that they simply don’t work. In spite of the number of states who have enacted safe haven laws, abandoned infants continue to be found on porches, doorsteps and near trash piles.
Throwing the Baby Out With the Bathwater?
The abandonment of children is certainly not a new phenomenon; reports from the mid 1800s indicate the occurrence of over 900 abandonments over a period of ten years in New York State alone. Safe haven laws, then, may be seen as a new(er) approach to an age old problem. They may not be able to completely prevent the unsafe abandonment of children, but can serve as a valuable part of a comprehensive strategy addressing the issue of abandonment. Admittedly, safe haven laws do have their disadvantages, but when the lives of children hang in the balance, their value cannot be disputed.
In spite of its critics, safe haven laws do work. In Ohio alone, the Department of Job and Family Services found that 63 babies have been safely surrendered since enactment of Ohio’s safe haven law in 2001. While Ohio’s safe haven law didn’t prevent the recent abandonment of a newborn by the side of a road, it has resulted in the safe surrender of children who could have been left in a much more vulnerable location or under dangerous conditions. Ohio has been pleased with the success of its safe haven law and has recently extended the time in which a parent may safely abandon an infant to an authorized safe haven provider from 72 hours to 30 days to encourage more parents to pursue this option.
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On several different fronts the battle for and against gay adoption is once again being fought across the country. From the polls in Arkansas, to a Florida courtroom to the floor of the Tennessee legislature, people on both sides of the issue are fighting it out. Each battlefield however is producing very different results.
On November 4, the country’s primary focus was understandably the historic election of Barack Obama. But in the state of Arkansas the electorate wasn’t only casting votes for its elected officials. Voters there also passed a measure banning unmarried couples living together from serving as adoptive or foster parents. The measure, which was aimed primarily at keeping gays from becoming foster or adoptive parents, surprisingly received nearly 57-percent support.
The measure’s sponsor, the Arkansas Family Council, positioned the measure as a battle against a “gay agenda” and the strategy appeared to have worked. Exit polls taken on Election Day showed the measure was supported by residents identifying themselves as evangelical or born-again Christians. Rural voters by and large also supported the measure.
Those who opposed the ban included Arkansas Governor Mike Beebe. Opponents like Beebe pointed to a current lack in foster homes as reason enough to vote against the measure. With its passage they now fear children in need of homes will be the ones who suffer the fall out. According to state officials, 1000 children in Arkansas are presently waiting to be adopted. The ban will in effect reduce the number of homes available. Children in need of parents and guardians will now likely have to wait even longer.
With those concerns in mind, opponents of the new Arkansas law filed a lawsuit at the end of December, asking a judge to strike the measure down. The lawsuit contends the new law violates federal and state constitutional rights to equal treatment and due process. The suit also argues the measure disregards the best interests of children while keeping children in state custody at additional and unnecessary costs to taxpayers.
Very similar arguments are what compelled a Florida judge to overturn her state’s long standing gay adoption ban. Ironically, the Florida ruling was handed down just three weeks after the Arkansas vote. A Miami-Dade Circuit Court judge found a Florida law that has banned adoptions by gay men and lesbians for over three decades unconstitutional. The judge said prohibiting homosexual adoption was not in the best interest of children and that the law violated equal protection rights for both children and prospective parents. Advocates for gay adoption say the Florida ruling also makes very clear that the evidence points to the fact that children raised by gay parents fare just as well as those raised by straight parents.
And now, the Tennessee legislature is weighing in on the issue. On January 30, a bill was introduced that would prohibit Tennessee couples-both gay and straight- who aren’t married from adopting. Unless a couple is actually married, they would be prohibited from adopting. The bill does not affect singles who adopt.
In fact across the country gay individuals have a far easier time adopting than couples. However in more than 20 states, it’s ambiguous as to whether the second person in a couple can also adopt their partner’s adopted or biological child if the person is gay. States like Utah, Michigan, Mississippi, and New Hampshire all have laws that do ban joint adoption.
It has been two years since the Ohio legislature took up the gay adoption issue. A bill introduced then would have fallen in line with the measures Florida recently overturned. Its intent was to bar all adoptions and foster care by gays and lesbians. The bill didn’t go far though, never even making it to the hearing stage. Presently Ohio permits single adoptions by gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender individuals. Ohio law does not clearly prohibit joint gay adoption either. However, second-parent adoption, where one parent already has legal rights of the child and a second parent is petitioning for joint rights, is not allowed.
Ironically adoption advocates on both sides of this issue often cite the same concern when arguing their position on the subject of gay adoption: The quality of a child’s life. Advocates of gay adoptions claim that thousands of children need loving homes and to forbid gay adoption is to reduce the overall number of homes available. However, groups against gay adoptions contend that gay adoption is an affront to conventional family values and that it’s in every child’s best interest to have both a mother and a father. Some of those same anti-gay adoption groups insist children raised in homosexual homes, especially females, act out sexually and that self-identity issues are prevalent. But The American Academy of Pediatrics and other gay adoption advocates point to the fact that there is no credible evidence that shows having gay parents harms children. Proponents also argue that for the children who never get placed in an adoptive home the future is often bleak and many of these children who leave the foster care system without ever finding a permanent family end up on the streets, or in jail, without a job or family to support them.
In the meantime, statistics provided by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services indicate there are approximately 129,000 foster care kids across the country. It is these children who hang in the balance, all in need of a stable home. For each of them, these continuing battles may very well make the difference as to when they finally find it.
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Though the number of American foreign adoptions has tripled since the early 1990s and peaked in 2004, these adoptions have dropped in the past three years, declining 15% in the last two years alone. This decline is partially due to stricter adoption policies in China and Russia, previously the top two counties for American foreign adoptions.
China, the top country for foreign adoptions since 2000, has increased waiting time for adoptions to 24 months or more. In addition, the country has experienced an increase in domestic adoptions, allowing them to restrict foreign adoptions to financially stable, healthy married couples between 30 and 50 and exclude single, obese, or unhealthy prospective adoptive parents.
Russian officials prohibited all foreign adoptions for several months this year by suspending adoption agencies and are slowly beginning to recertify them. Russia, like China, is also attempting to increase domestic adoptions within the country.
Foreign adoptions from Haiti and South Korea have also experienced drops, while adoptions from Guatemala, Vietnam, and Ethiopia have increased. However, experts expect numbers in Guatemala to decrease as the government plans to introduce new adoption regulations in response to fraud and extortion claims as part of the Hague Convention on international adoptions. While the new regulations are being put in place, Americans are urged not to initiate Guatemalan adoptions.
Some experts find this decrease in U.S. foreign adoptions from previously popular countries to represent positive changes, such as increased interest in inter-country adoptions and an investigation and awareness of new countries. Others, however, view it negatively, suggesting that the changes in China and Russia reflect a trend encouraged by international children’s organizations, such as UNICEF, to care for children within their own country, even when such services are less than adequate.
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As their adult children move out, get married and begin families, many “empty nest” parents, whether single, widowed, or married, are choosing to adopt children of their own. Many counties value older parents, and therefore many older adoptive parents chose to adopt intentionally. Some also chose to adopt older children or teenagers, who involve less physical lifting and are less likely to affect sleep schedules.
Agencies report that while it is more common than ever for older couples to adopt, general adoption statistics continue to grow and therefore “empty nest” adoptions are merely staying proportional to all other adoptions.
Critics of this growing trend suggest that older couples who adopt are subjecting their children to the risk of making end-of-life decisions and losing their parents at a young age. They worry that older parents may be seeking a second “baby experience” but will lack the patience and energy necessary to raise a child.
Oppositely, supporters of the trend site that this demographic group is a new source that can provide loving homes for many children who would otherwise live in orphanages or foster care. In addition, older adoptive parents have parenting experience and expertise which can assist in providing a prosperous environment for children.
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Adoption Advice
NBC 4′s Ana Jackson talks to a local attorney about the challenges of adopting Haitian orphans.
BY BONNIE MILLER RUBIN, CHICAGO TRIBUNE
CHICAGO — For years, Americans hoping to build families through adoption looked overseas because the path was more predictable and less complicated than domestic adoption.
But in recent years, the landscape has changed dramatically, experts say.
Three of the most popular countries — China, Guatemala and Russia — have scaled back, tightened rules or temporarily halted adoptions as they struggle to establish more transparency and accountability.
Countries also have raised the eligibility bar, excluding more prospective parents based on income, marital status and even — in the case of China — body mass index.
Even if a couple manage to slice through the bureaucracy, there’s the price — which can hit $40,000 in some countries, double what it was 10 years ago and a deal breaker for many families.
“It’s never been so difficult to adopt internationally,” said Julie Tye, president of the Cradle in Evanston, Ill., calling it the most challenging climate that she has seen in a decade.
A decrease in available children has caused up to 25 of American agencies to close or merge since 2000, according to the National Council for Adoption in Alexandria, Va.
“The days of a large sending country are over,” said Chuck Johnson, the council’s vice president.
The current picture is a stark contrast to a nearly two-decade-long overseas baby boom, which started in the early 1990s and peaked in 2004 with almost 23,000 adoptions by U.S. parents. But since then, the numbers have steadily declined, with only about 12,750 international adoptions in the U.S. in 2009 — the smallest total since 1997, according to State Department data.
A major shift came in 2008 with the Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption. The treaty — signed by 70 countries, including the United States — has been widely supported by accredited agencies as an important step in eliminating concerns of baby-selling and coercion. Such allegations were common in Guatemala and Vietnam.
Although the pact certainly slowed the process by implementing more safeguards, other factors explain today’s realities, as well.
Russia had routinely allowed about 5,000 or more adoptions to the U.S. annually, but that figure has shriveled to about 1,500 simply because the nation is in less turmoil than it was after the fall of communism, analysts say.
China — which sent almost 8,000 kids to the U.S. in 2005 — accounted for just 3,000 adoptions last year. The decrease can be attributed, in part, to a robust economy and a larger middle class, giving couples more financial stability to raise kids and afford fines for having more than one child, experts say.
“It used to be that if you met the requirements, you would have a child in 12 to 18 months … but no more,” said Tom Jackson of Sunny Ridge Family Center in Bolingbrook, Ill., and Munster, Ind.
His agency had such a backlog a year ago it stopped taking applications for its China program — and has no idea when it will reopen. In 2003, Sunny Ridge completed 84 Chinese adoptions, versus 16 last year.
And just about everywhere else, there’s a new emphasis to first look for prospective parents at home, with nations like South Korea and India pouring more resources into domestic adoption.
In fact, only Ethiopia is on an upswing. That country, which figured in a mere 289 adoptions in 2004, now ranks second with almost 2,300 U.S. adoptions.
Jackson said parents are reconsidering their options and looking at special-needs children, older children and sibling adoptions — both in the U.S. and abroad.
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Changes in Adoption Laws
House Bill 7 provides additional financial support to the birth mother consenting to the adoption of her child. In addition to the payments of allowable expenses related to the adoption or placement of a child such as medical or legal expenses, prospective adoptive parents may now pay up to $3,000 of the living expenses incurred by the birth mother for the duration of her pregnancy and for 60 days after the child is born. The payment of these living expenses must flow through the attorney or agency arranging the adoption, but will ultimately provide much needed financial support for birth mother.
The bill also contains a requirement that the Director of Job and Family Services must promulgate rules that will ensure that adoption and foster care home study procedures and content are in alignment. This will help promote efficiency and consistency for the adoption and foster care systems, which should help make the adoption process go more smoothly.
The length of time in which a child must live with a foster parent before the foster parent may submit an adoption application has been decreased from 12 months to 6 months. Also, a juvenile court no longer needs to consent to adoptions before a probate court can grant adoption petitions that include legal guardians or custodians. As a result of these changes, children will have the opportunity to be adopted at a much faster rate and the number of children awaiting permanent homes will likely decrease.
Where a parent has not been in contact with the child for one year and failed to provide for the child, consent by the parent is no longer forfeited; rather, under the new law, the court must find by clear and convincing evidence that the parent did not try to establish contact with the child or provide any support. In addition, the clerk of courts must send a notice to the parent stating the legal ramifications of the adoption and informing the parent of his or her right to contest the child’s adoption. While the use of the “clear and convincing” standard as opposed to the automatic forfeiture of rights may be seen as a means to impede rather than expedite the adoption process, its usage will provide the birth parent(s) with the ability to contest the adoption before their parental rights are terminated and in doing so may reduce the possibility of lengthy appeals.
Another change provides for the finalization of an interlocutory order not less than six months and not over one year from the date the adoptee is placed in the adoptive home instead of anywhere between six months and one year from the date the order is issued. This provision will decrease the time the court has available for observation, investigation, and review of home study reports while also decreasing the amount of time that the adoptive parents must wait before the adoption is final. Current law which allows the court to vacate an interlocutory order sooner for good cause relating to adoptions involving foster parents or relatives remains unchanged in the bill.
A juvenile court must now consider the ability of the adoptive parents to meet the needs of the other children living in their home.
The bill also adopts a new definition of “non-identifying information” by listing types of information that may be requested in relation to the adoptive parent. Prior to the passage of House Bill 7, Ohio law only addressed the type of information considered as “non-identifying” as that which pertained to the birth parent. Under the bill, the adoptive parent’s age at the time of adoption, an adoptive sibling’s age at the time of adoption, the heritage, ethnic background, religion, educational level, and occupation of the adoptive parent, and general information known about the well-being of the adoptee both prior and after adoption is considered to be information that does not identify the parties involved and therefore subject to inquiry. The bill does authorize an agency, attorney, person, or other governmental authority to reclassify any non-identifying information related to an adoptive family as identifying information on a case-by-case basis and to deny the request made for that information. In addition, House Bill 7 preserves the ability of a birth parent of an adopted person, a birth sibling over 18 years, or a birth family member of a deceased birth parent to submit a written request for non-identifying information as well as retains the definition of what constitutes such information, but stipulates that the birth parent must wait until the adopted child is 18 years of age before the information can be requested.
Changes in Child Welfare Laws
Under House Bill 7, a juvenile court may extend a temporary custody order for an additional time beyond that by which a PCSA or a PCPA may extend a temporary custody order by motion. The bill permits a juvenile court to extend a temporary custody order in increments of six months each, but under no circumstance may it extend the order for more than one year. In addition, the bill prohibits the court from extending the temporary custody order beyond two years from either the date when the complaint was filed or when the child was put in shelter care, whichever comes first and irrespective of any previous extensions. This provision allows a juvenile court more latitude in its disposition of the child, while safeguarding against the placement of a child in temporary custody for an inordinate period of time.
The new law mandates that a juvenile court must, under specific circumstances, place a child in a PSCA’s or PCPA’s custody. The child is required to be placed with a PCSA or PCPA if all of the following apply: 1) the court determines by clear and convincing evidence that the child cannot be placed with one of the child’s parents within a reasonable time or should not be placed with either parent; 2) the child has been in an agency’s custody for two years or longer, and no longer qualifies for temporary custody; 3) the child does not meet the requirements for a planned permanent living arrangement pursuant to current law; and 4) prior to the dispositional hearing, no relative or other interested person has filed, or has been identified in, a motion for legal custody of the child.
The law provides specifications concerning when it is necessary for the child to stay in residential or institutional care. If the child is unable to function in a family-like setting due to physical or mental disability and must therefore remain in residential or institutional care, the law specifies that the child must remain in such care for “now and the foreseeable future” beyond the date of the child’s dispositional hearing.
Finally, the new law provides an additional standard for the involuntary termination of the parental rights of a parent who has already had his or her parental rights terminated in regards to a sibling of the child in question. Under House Bill 7, the parent must prove by clear and convincing evidence that in spite of the previous termination, the parent can provide a secure, permanent placement and adequate care for the health, welfare, and safety of the child. While this provision allows the parent the ability to preserve his parental rights for the child regardless of the loss of parental rights in respect to another child, it also protects the child who is the current subject of a TPR proceeding by requiring the parent to meet a stricter burden of proof.
The passage of House Bill 7 effectuates many positive changes in Ohio adoption laws and will encourage adoptions in Ohio of children in need of permanent homes. With approximately 2,800 children waiting for adoptive families out of the more than 22,000 children in Ohio living in either foster care or some type of out-of-home placement, it is necessary to make the adoption process more accessible.
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According to recent polls, 47% of chief U.S. companies offer some form of financial support to adoptive parents, increased from 12% of companies in 1990. The specific packages offered vary greatly; in a 2007 survey of 762 companies, the average adoption benefit package includes five weeks of paid leave and a reimbursement of $4,700. Other companies offered anywhere between one week of paid time off and a $500 stipend to 16 weeks of paid leave and a reimbursement of $20,960, allowing for total coverage of an average international adoption. In addition, companies also supply employees with outside adoption information, support groups, and agency contacts.
Though a company must fund 100% of adoption benefits without insurance assistance, the cost of providing these benefits is relatively low, as they are not an ongoing cost. In addition, the benefits for employers who offer increased adoption benefits are numerous. These packages allow for the promotion of a family- friendly image among the community and to potential new employees, and, as 50% of Americans have either adopted children themselves or have close relationships with adoptive parents, adoption benefits allow companies to stay current with the changing American family.
Some adoptive parents report that without employer adoption benefit packages, adoption would be more difficult due to high costs. In addition, as more and more people consider adopting children, whether or not employers offer assistance is an important issue for potential employees.
A 3-5% increase in companies offering adoption benefit packages is expected in the coming years as well as continued expansion of benefits offered, such as increased incentives for parents who adopt foster children. Employers interested in creating employee adoption benefit packages are offered free assistance on The Dave Thomas Foundation’s website.
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By CHRIS FRANCESCANI with ABC News
In the wake of the earthquake that devastated Haiti earlier this month, thousands of “Good Morning America” viewers have contacted the show, asking how they can help the many children orphaned by the quake. ABCNews.com spoke with U.S. government officials, aid organizations and non-governmental organizations to get the latest information on adoption of Haitian orphans.
Question: Can I adopt a Haitian Orphan?
Answer: No, not at present. In the wake of the earthquake that devastated the island nation earlier this month, new adoption applications for Haitian orphans are not being processed and are on hold indefinitely, according to the U.S. State Department. It’s unclear when the process will begin again.
Question: Why won’t the Haitian government allow the adoption of orphans?
Answer: The Haitian government is still in the process of identifying and registering children who were orphaned after the earthquake. In addition to concerns about child-sex trafficking, officials in Haiti need time to clearly identify a child as an orphan. Because of the number of missing and displaced Haitians, the process is long and arduous.
Question: Are any adoptions of Haitian orphans underway?
Answer: Yes. About 700 U.S. families who were already “far along” in the process are being allowed to complete their adoptions, according to Chuck Johnson, vice president of the National Council for Adoption in Washington, D.C. About 1,000 children are expected to be taken out of Haiti under the initiative, according to the U.S. State Department.
Question: What are the Haitian government’s requirements for prospective adoptive parents?
Answer: “It’s quite a lengthy and detailed process [with] a lot of very strict and rather unusual requirements that do not apply in most countries,” Michele Bond, the U.S. State Department’s deputy assistant secretary for Overseas Citizens Services, said. “You have to be married at least 10 years; you can’t be accepted as [adoptive parents] in Haiti if [you] already have a biological child, and you can’t be accepted if one parent is less than 19 years older than the child.”
So, for example, an adoption of a 10 year old would not be allowed if one spouse is 35 and the other is 28. Should prospective parents fall into any of these categories, they would need a presidential dispensation. “They would have to wait for the [Haitian] president to review your file, and then it goes to the courts there,” Bond said, adding that she doesn’t know of any other government that has such criteria. Information on same-sex couples was not immediately available, according to State Department officials.
Adopting Haitian Orphans
Question: How long does the process of adopting a Haitian orphan take?
Answer: It could take up to three or more years to adopt a Haitian orphan under pre-earthquake conditions. It’s unclear how long it would take now.
There are two parts to the process. The first part is a petition to the U.S. government to be declared eligible to adopt a child. That process, known as the I-600 process because of the name of the form, takes between 60 and 90 days, according to U.S. government officials and aid organizations. It involves a criminal background check, a medical background check and a suitability determination that involves visits to the home and interview with the prospective parents.
The second part of the process involves gaining approval from the Haitian government. That process takes two to three years, once the U.S. government approves the I-600 petition, according to U.S. government officials and aid organizations.
Question: Is that a long time compared to adoptions from other countries?
Answer: It is relatively long. Ethiopia, for example, matches adoptive parents to orphans in as little as 14 months, Johnson said, while countries such as China can take up to five years.
Question: Approximately how much does it cost to adopt a Haitian orphan?
Answer: The cost of adopting a child from Haiti can range from $10,000 to $25,000, according to Kathleen Strottman, executive director of the Congressional Coalition on Adoption Issues.
“The costs vary depending on the agency used and the services they provide (some are a one-stop shop, others do basic services) [the] State Department reports that the cost of the adoption itself is approximately $3,000 and the remaining are travel and agency fees,” Strottman wrote in an e-mail.
Written by Jeff Katz, The Huffington Post
The New York Times published a magnificent story about the Heaton family of Roca, Nebraska (population 130), who are in the process of adopting two Haitian girls, ages 7 and 2. Like 900 other Haitian children just flown to the United States, these children had been in the adoption process for years, stymied by bureaucracy and inertia. Spurred by the humanitarian crisis of the Haitian earthquake, the United States has eased its visa requirements for Haitian children in the final stages of the adoption process. According to the Times story, when the Heatons landed in Omaha with their new daughters, they were “greeted by throngs of well-wishers toting teddy bears and balloons.”
I was moved by this but not surprised. The United States is the most open country in the world when it comes to adoption. In many parts of the world, blood means everything and people would never adopt outside their family. In the United States, we have a far more expansive view of family. In fact, half of all adoptions in the world are by Americans.
And it’s not just that Americans adopt. Americans adopt children that might be shunned in other countries. The younger of the children being adopted by the Heatons had a medical condition that left her brain partially exposed. The family made numerous trips to Haiti and hosted the child when she came to the United States for a medical procedure to correct the problem.
Kathy Heaton described her reasons for adopting. “We can’t think of anything we’d rather do than raise these children and make a difference.” The Heaton family is like tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of Americans, driven to adopt out of a sense of altruism. Last year Americans adopted 55,000 abused and neglected children from foster care. It is as simple as wanting to help a hurt child.
Perhaps the most interesting aspect to the story of the Haitian orphans is that it took a natural disaster of such tragic proportions to shake the bureaucracy. Many, like the two girls being adopted by the Heaton family, have spent much of their lives in an orphanage while waiting for the “system” to work. Why did it take such a tragedy to free these 900 children?
Unfortunately, there is a sad parallel between the plight of Haitian children waiting in orphanages and the 125,000 American children waiting in foster care to be adopted. That parallel is a system that too often acts as a roadblock instead of an emergency service responding to the urgent need of a child without a family.
Contrary to conventional wisdom, in the United States, there are far, far, more people interested in adopting children from foster care than there are children in need of families. Talk to people trying to adopt from foster care (and I have spoken to thousands) and you will quickly learn that there are far too many places in the child welfare system where the incentives for inaction outweigh the incentives for action. So children wait.
I have worked in this field for 20 years and I have seen countless examples of good people wanting nothing more than to help a hurt child heal. I have seen children in wheelchairs adopted. I have seen a child scarred by cigarette burns adopted by a woman who recognized those scars from her own childhood abuse. Last year I met an 18-year-old kid with “thug life” tattooed on his arms. He had just been adopted and when he spoke about his “mama” he wept.
We are blessed in this country to have an overabundance of families who want to provide homes to children in need. It should not take a catastrophic natural disaster to motivate us to sweep away the barriers that prevent children in need from having the families they deserve.
Written by Babygirlmona and posted on Pound Pup Legacy Blog
Flexibility and a sense of humor are vital characteristics when raising children and they can come in handy during the home study as well. For instance, if you have the flexibility in your job and are willing to take off an hour early to meet with the social worker or to modify your schedule in some other way to make the meeting arrangements flow smoothly, that effort will be appreciated by the worker. As a parent to be, many more of these accommodations are in your future; therefore the social worker often believes you might as well start getting used to them!
The duration of the home study will vary from agency to agency, depending on various factors, such as how many social workers are assigned to conduct home studies, what other duties they have, and how many other people applied to the agency at the same time as you. You can do a lot to expedite the process by filling out your paperwork, scheduling your medical appointments, and gathering the required documents.
The cost of the home study depends on which kind of agency or practitioner is conducting the study. A public agency (often your local Department of Social Services) does not usually charge a fee for a home study, since it is supported by government funds. However, occasionally a public agency may charge a modest home study fee-once you adopt one of the agency’s children, you can usually obtain a reimbursement for this fee.
A private agency might charge from $1,000 to $3,000 for the home study, although it may charge no fees or charge lesser fees for home studies for children with special needs. For a non-special-needs child, the fee may cover an application fee and pre-placement services, but be sure to confirm this. For locating a specific child and providing follow-up or post-placement services, you will usually be charged a separate fee. These services could possibly be performed by a second agency. Fees for these additional services could range from $2,500 to $25,000. Many agencies allow the fees to be paid in installments. Again, be sure to discuss this thoroughly so that there are no misunderstandings.
A certified social worker in private practice often conducts home studies for independent adoptions. Fees for these are probably in the same range as those for private agencies. Independent adoptions are not legal in all States.
Remember, even though an adoption home study may seem invasive or lengthy, it is conducted to prepare you for adoption and help you decide whether adoption is really for you. The regulations serve to protect the best interest of the child and to ensure he or she is placed in a loving, caring, healthy, and safe environment. Once you accept that premise, it often becomes a lot easier to complete what is required of you. After all, the reward of withstanding a short period of inconvenience is great: many years of happiness and fulfillment raising a child to maturity.
Good luck to you in your pursuit of a child through adoption and with your adoption home study. With perseverance and a good attitude, you will be able to team with the adoption social worker to make this a valuable learning experience-one which will help you to do the best possible job in parenting the child who will join your family. After all, the adoption worker wants you to accomplish your goal of adopting, especially if one more child gets a loving, permanent, safe family.
Written by Mike Adkins
In Judaism, adoption is an important as well as an intricate issue. Although the Jewish Law recognizes adoption as a legitimate way to build a family, it also evokes conflicting messages, known as halakhah, in regards to adoption. Emphasizing greatly on bloodlines and ancestry, Judaism prioritizes tradition with respect to adoption.
A child that is legally adopted under the Jewish Law and is being brought up in a traditional Jewish household is not considered an adoptee. In regards to the Jewish religion, the adopted child is considered part of the family. However, for a Jewish family that wishes to adopt a non-Jewish child, there is always an additional filter that respects the Jewish tradition through generations of Jewish families.
Under the Jewish Law, an adopted child is duty-bound in the laws of death and mourning in the event of a loss of a close relative, namely mother, father, sister, brother, spouse, son or daughter. Considered as an immediate family, the adopted child recites the traditional mourner’s prayer (Kaddish) for 12 months and is obligated in the laws of mourning.
Jewish adoptive parents should carefully consider how they communicate respect for the Jewish religion to the adopted child without diminishing the importance of the birth parents’ religion. Particularly, when it comes to open adoptions and the birth family is not Jewish, the child is likely to raise questions about the Jewish religion, the birth parents’ religion, the differences between the two, why they exist, which is better etc. In these cases, both adoptive and placing parents should communicate in a respectful way and should follow a common way on explaining all these questions to the child without prejudices and conflict.
In many cases, there are conflicts between the different factions of Judaism, namely Orthodox, Reform, Reconstructionist and Conservative. Under the Jewish Law, an adopted child whose birth mother is not Jewish should be officially converted to Judaism. However, if the birth father is Jewish, Reform and Reconstructionist Jews do not proceed to conversion, while Orthodox Jews recognize conversions performed solely by Orthodox Rabbis.
All these complexities create additional challenges in regards to adoption under the Jewish Law. For children who are not born Jewish and have different race and culture in their genes, it is a difficult challenge to connect with a Jewish family, particularly when outsiders question this connection. There are cases that Chinese children are adopted by Jewish families and because their characteristics are so unique, they have been told that they are not Jewish. The same has happened with blond children with blue eyes, who do not look like typical Jews and again their identity has been questioned by third parties at school or even at the synagogue.
For all adopted children is difficult to create a solid identity. Jewish adoptive families should help children who are not born Jewish to develop a strong Jewish identity. On the other hand, they should respect the challenges that evoke from the birth family’s religion. There are cases that Jewish children have celebrated Christmas with their birth parents because the Jewish adoptive parents have accepted that their child should make his or her own choices. In any event, communication is the key.
By Ana Jackson, Reporter for NBC4
DELAWARE, Ohio – Imagine being an adoptive parent, just weeks away from receiving a child from a birth mother, only to find out the mother was never pregnant.
It’s a scheme that has fooled and broken the hearts of Midwest couples.
Shawn and Laura Mickens fell victim to the scheme.
They have been searching for a baby for the last 18 months and already lost out on a previous adoption opportunity.
So when they saw an ad for a local birth mother who was supposedly due in three weeks, they jumped at the chance and scheduled a meeting right away.
“She got so attached to us. She was rubbing her belly, calling it by the child’s name even though she wasn’t really pregnant. She just looked pregnant,” Shawn said.
The couple said the mother agreed to sign all of the paperwork necessary for the adoption but then suddenly stopped calling.
The Mickens posted their story on online adoption forums and found that nine other couples had fallen victim to the very same scheme.
“We’re trying to give a child a good home, and she’s ruining the adoption process for these families. She’s breaking their hearts and making them think twice if they really want to do this,” Laura said.
Adoption attorney Tommy Taneff said similar schemes are rare, but couples should always do their homework on a birth mother.
He said couples should run background checks and do Internet searches and always should work with an adoption attorney to prevent problems.
The Mickens said they will continue to pursue adoption despite the disheartening scheme.
In the meantime, they are working to get the word out about the scheme.
They said local authorities decided the case was too weak to pursue in court.
Written By Rose M. Garland and posted on NewsBlaze.com
Americans for Open Adoption Records posts about reasons why any adopted person should have access to their own adoption records. Adoption records can be illuminating for an adoptee. They may show information that most non-adoptees take for granted, such as race, single or twin birth, other siblings, mother and father’s names (if available), and also some potentially important medical history.
I knew my birth-family for the almost 11 years I spent in foster care until my official adoption at 14. Therefore, I have had access to medical information and medical history that may not be accessible to many American’s who were adopted at much younger ages, or who were a part of closed adoption proceedings. However, my younger birth sister was adopted young and part of closed adoption proceedings. She already had 3 children before I met her in her 20′s, and was able to tell her to screen for Epilepsy. Her oldest child had already had a severe seizure and because of this knowledge, she was armed with the knowledge to screen her other children for Epilepsy and for other genetic diseases.
An adoptee has the same right to know their medical history as anyone else does. If the adoptee is aware of heart disease or diabetes in their immediate birth family, they can be forewarned to be screened for these illnesses. A woman might want to know if there are genetic triggers that may complicate a pregnancy. Open adoption records would be helpful for doctors who would have a basis to go on when treating patients who were adopted.
Even something as simple as knowing your race or races can be a huge advantage. There are different illnesses that certain races are more susceptible to than others. I cannot imagine any person not wanting to be forewarned about potential health risk factors.
Sometimes records contain information that is not health-related, but gives the adoptee information they may not have expected. For example, I was able to view my own adoption records, and was touched by some of the information in them that I had never known.
Social workers have chronicled my life almost as long as I have been alive. One excerpt from my own record was, “Rose is almost 3 years old. She is a quiet child who tries to take care of everyone. She follows her mom around and mimics her actions, including trying to vacuum. She tries to get her mother to sit down while she takes care of her.” This is interesting to me, because I was put into foster care just after that. The information from this record, not only gave me a childhood story that I’d never had, but taught me more about the reasons that the removal into foster care was a necessity for my own well-being.
AMFOR and organizations like this, have a worthy purpose. Knowing what is in your adoption records is one more step into knowing important information about who you really are.
By David Castellon with Visalia Times-Delta and Tulare Advance-Register
Of the hundreds of teenage girls going through unplanned pregnancies that Karen Pringle deals with in her job, few — maybe 1 percent — tell her they plan to put their babies up for adoption.
Pringle and others who work with teenage and pregnant girls in Tulare County say rarely does the subject of adoption come up. And when it does, the girls and young women often don’t think much of the idea.
Pringle is perinatal services coordinator for the Tulare County Health and Human Services Agency.
Maricela Lupercio, director of Latinos4Life, an anti-abortion group based in Visalia, said adoption seems to be particularly taboo among Hispanic girls and young women.
She recounted a recent conversation with a woman who had an abortion at 15, became pregnant again and gave birth to a child.
She now is pregnant for the third time at 19 and was considering another abortion, Lupercio said. “I asked her if she had ever considered adoption, and she said, ‘Oh, no. I could never do that.’ ”
Lupercio said that for some girls, particularly Hispanics, adoption has a bad image — even worse than abortion for some.
“As far as I know and [among] the people who I know and I’ve met, in the Hispanic culture, it’s not as common to adopt babies,” she said.
So a lot of Hispanic girls often aren’t exposed to adoption and never see the positive outcomes of it, Lupercio explained.
They believe “adoption is some taboo thing to do,” and it just doesn’t enter their minds as an option in dealing with unplanned or unwanted pregnancies.
Sharon Phillips, a school nurse who teaches health and sex education classes for 12 Tulare County school districts, the closest being the Tulare Joint Union High and Farmersville Unified school districts, agrees.
“I never hear adoption [brought up] very much,” she said.
Sex education instructors contacted for this report said abortion or adoption aren’t part of their curriculums. And if students bring those subjects up during their classes, their responses usually are limited.
For example, “If they were to ask me, I would tell them where they could go to ask about adoption,” said Aracelly Oros, program coordinator for the Proteus Inc. Community Challenge Grant, which provides comprehensive sex education classes to Visalia middle and high schools.
It’s not something many parents or friends of pregnant teens want to hear either, said Shyla Erich-Smith, a Tulare-based adoption attorney.
“It seems to be a theme that I’ve heard that they’re being pressured to keep the children by their peers, by their parents. There just seems to be a cultural thing in this area,” she said.
And that pressure can lead to some bad decisions, including girls hiding their pregnancies — or at least trying to — so they can have their babies adopted without family and friends finding out, Erich-Smith said.
During her murder trial in October, Nancy Ortiz testified she had hidden from her family three pregnancies, secretly had given birth over nearly two years and had abandoned all three newborns in her Orosi neighborhood.
One of those babies died of hypothermia.
Ortiz, 24, convicted of second-degree murder and child abuse, claimed she never considered abortion or adoption because she didn’t believe her family would have allowed her to do either, even though she was an adult.
Erich-Smith said she’s had several clients who have hidden their pregnancies by wearing baggy clothes, as Ortiz did.
Many pregnant minors aren’t aware that the law says they can make decisions about their babies that their parents can’t override even though they aren’t adults, said Peggy Schulze, adoption services manager for Chrysalis House Inc., a Fresno-based adoption agency.
Still, even with the law on the minor parents’ side, some still give in to family and peer pressure in deciding whether to keep their babies, Erich-Smith said.
Adding to the pressure on young parents is the belief that once they arrange an adoption, they never will see their children again, Schulze said. “It just doesn’t seem a positive choice.”
But that’s not necessarily true, as those sorts of “closed adoptions” aren’t the only options available, she said.
“A closed adoption is where [a mother] may or may not choose the adoptive parents, but there is no identifying information exchanged, there is no contact after placement. That is very, very rare now. Most women don’t choose closed adoption,” Schulze explained. “Most women want to know how their child is doing down the road. They want updates. They want pictures, and we explain to them they have this right.”
As such, the birth mother — and the baby’s father, if he chooses to be involved — have options ranging from periodically receiving photos and updates on the child to having occasional visits with the child to becoming extended family, depending on the agreement made with the adoptive family, Schulze and Erich-Smith said.
In addition, the birth parents can set guidelines for choosing the adoptive parents, including religion, race and whether there already are other children in a household.
In adoptions arranged by lawyers and adoption agencies, mothers can choose to meet with potential adoptive parents and pick who will get their babies.
If birth parents don’t want to deal with a lawyer or private adoption agency, the county’s Health and Human Services Agency also has an adoption unit, said Kathleen Trevino, the agency’s adoption team leader.
“They can give us some parameters [for selecting adoptive parents], but a lot of our families aren’t looking to do open adoptions like the private agencies,” she said.
Health and Human Services doesn’t have as extensive a list of people looking to adopt as adoption lawyers and adoption agencies may have, Trevino added.
Parents working to adopt their children through the county would have to surrender those children to the county through a relinquishment process that can begin before the child is born but can’t be finalized until after the birth and the mother has been released from the hospital.
Adoption lawyers and adoption agencies may offer counseling to the birth mothers and fathers before and after the adoptions, and Trevino said her office’s social workers can provide counseling or refer the parents to Tulare County Mental Health Services if they need more extensive treatment.
Newborns given up through California’s Safe Surrender Program also may be put up for adoption, though parents have a 14-day cooling period to change their minds and reclaim their children. After the 14 days, parent may still be able to regain custody of their surrendered children once authorities determine they are fit to care for them.
In some cases, parents may not have choices about adoptions if their children are removed from their custody because of abuse or neglect.
“In most cases, we try unification” to bring the families back together, which may involve parenting classes, substance-abuse counseling or the resolution of the situations that resulted in the children being removed, said Charlotte Wittig, a Tulare County Superior Court commissioner whose duties include overseeing adoptions of children who have become county dependents.
In the year ended last June 30, 123 children who were county dependents were adopted, down from 204 in the previous year, according to Health and Human Services records. Since July 1, 70 county dependents have had their adoptions finalized.
By David Castellon with Visalia Times-Delta and Tulare Advance-Register
The New York Times, Motherlode Column
By LISA BELKIN
Whenever the subject here is adoption readers point out that while the difficult cases make the news, most adoptive families are happy and most adopted children are healthy and well-adjusted.
Today is the final day of National Adoption Month, and a fitting time to take a look at the report “Adoption USA: A Chartbook Based on the 2007 National Survey of Adoptive Parents” which was released recently by the Department of Health and Human Services. Based on interviews with parents of 91,642 adopted children, its authors describe the report as “the first ever survey to provide representative information about the characteristics, adoption experiences, and well-being of adopted children and their families in the United States.”
Among its findings: the overwhelming majority of families whose children came to them through adoption are doing just fine.
Eighty-five percent of the children are described as being in “excellent or very good health”, the same as the general population. Eighty-one percent of the parents described their relationships with their child as “very warm and close,” while 42 percent say those relationships are “better than ever expected,” and only 15 percent say they are “more difficult” than they had expected.
In some categories adopted children can be considered measurably better off than the average American child.They are, for instance, more likely to be read to daily when they are younger (68 compared with 48 percent), to be sung to or told stories every day (73 compared with 59 percent), or to participate in extracurricular activities as school-age children (85 compared with 81 percent).
That does not mean that there are not bumps and difficulties on the adoption path. While only the minority of adopted children have “special health care needs” (39 percent) or “moderate to severe health difficulties” (26 percent), or a diagnosis of asthma (19 percent) these are all higher numbers than those of the general population (which are 19 percent, 10 percent and 13 percent.)
Similarly, while “only a small minority of adopted children have ever been diagnosed with disorders such as attachment disorder, depression, attention deficit disorder or attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder, or behavior or conduct disorder,” the report says, the percentage of each of these appears higher in the subset of adoptive children than in the general population. (There are no statistics on the prevalence of attachment disorder in the general population, but 12 percent of parents of adoptive children report such a diagnosis; while 4 percent of the general population of children have been diagnosed with severe to moderate A.D.H.D., 14 percent of adopted children have; the statistics for “behavior or conduct problems” is 2 percent vs. 8 percent, while reported “problems with social behaviors is 9 percent vs. 14 percent. All these problems are more prevalent in children who were adopted out of foster care than in those adopted internationally or privately.)
As so many of you have said on this subject, no one case represents the whole of adoption. On the flip side, statistics like these can paint a large scale picture, but not capture the truth of your particular family.
Do these numbers ring true to you? Do you find them reassuring or worrisome?
By Kelli Wynn, Staff Writer for Dayton Daily News
U. S. Army Maj. Jason Schranks and his wife Susan looked through numerous DVDs to find their three new children.
“It was absolutely the hardest part in this whole process. How do you say, no?” Susan Schrank said of the experience she and her husband had looking at the numerous children eligible for adoption.
In the midst of their search, the Fairborn couple talked with their Ethiopian niece. When the niece, who now lives in Illinois, found out that her aunt and uncle wanted to adopt, she suggested they consider one of the orphanage friends she met before she was adopted.
The Schranks took her advice. Last December, they decided to adopt Yordanos, 13, and her 10-year-old sister Fortuna. They also decided to adopt a son, 7-year-old Girma. All three spent at least four years at an orphanage.
The sisters were placed in one orphanage after their uncle could no longer care for them. Girma’s older brother was taking care of him after their parents died, but his day laborer job made that impossible.
The new additions will bring the Schranks’ household to seven. They have two sons, 15-year-old Phillip and 9-year-old Andrew.
The Schranks decided on international adoption after moving to Ohio from Trinidad and Tobago in 2008. Jason Schrank was stationed to work there and the couple had also done some humanitarian work there, Susan Schrank said.
Despite couples like the Schranks and Jeff and Kate Wagner, fewer people are adopting locally, according to local court and children services officials.
Finalized adoption cases within the Montgomery and Warren County Probate courts have declined within the last two years while Greene County Probate Court has seen an increase.
In 2007, the Montgomery County Probate Court finalized 243 adoptions compared to the 175 cases finalized last year and 164 so far this year. Warren County Probate Court finalized 84 cases in 2007 compared to 77 in 2008. Greene County Probate Court had 109 adoption cases in 2007 and 155 in 2008.
Marsha Linkhart, the Greene County court’s chief deputy clerk, could not explain the increase for Greene County, but it might be a temporary blip. The court has finalized just 95 adoptions this year, Linkhart said.
The 2009 adoption total for Montgomery County includes 10 cases that were finalized in Probate Court Judge Alice McCollum’s courtroom on Nov. 13 during National Adoption Day. McCollum blamed the economy for the declining numbers over the last couple of years. Ann Stevens, spokeswoman for the Montgomery County Children Services, agreed.
“It’s been really tough since the recession,” Stevens said. “Everybody’s family’s budget has been affected by the recession, so we’re not seeing as much interest as we would like … People don’t have disposable income.”
Adoptions have also been hurt because the state has reduced the adoption subsidy, McCollum said.
Brian Harter, public information officer for the state’s Department of Job and Family Services, said the monthly adoption subsidy has decreased from $300 per child to $240.
The state also changed the reimbursement of non-recurring adoption from $2,000 to $1,000 for a child with special needs, Harter said.
The Schranks received some financial help from the U.S. military and grants from adoption agencies. Their three international adoptions were done through Adoption Advocates International, based in Washington State.
“There is a tax benefit to this. Most of our adoption expenses will be covered via tax rebate,” Susan Schrank said.
Jeff Wagner, 49, and his wife Kate, 42, said costs associated with adoption and parenting in general were never factors when they decided to adopt their boys.
“I don’t think that either one of us thought we have to make sure that we can give these kids everything in the world before we decide that we wanted to adopt them,” Kate Wagner said. “We just wanted to make sure that they have the basics and that we could provide for them on that level.”
The Wagners decided to become foster parents after they found out they could not have children.
“We always wanted kids,” Jeff said.
Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2414 or kwynn@DaytonDailyNews.com.
Adoption disruption insurance (ADI) is often referred to as adoption insurance. Again the insurance is to help families within the U.S. adopting domestically to recover certain qualifying expenses if an adoption is disrupted or falls through.
Adoption insurance may cover out of pocket costs such as delivery expenses, birth mother’s legal expenses, homestudy costs and/or travel expenses.
Many situations can cause an adoption to fall through, including a miscarriage, complicated legal issues, or simply the birth mother changes her mind and cancels her adoption plan.
It is important to review the adoption insurance policy regarding the coverage limits, conditions, limitations, warranties, and especially exclusions.
Most adoption insurance is only offered for adoptions that are handled by an approved adoption attorney or agency and for only the adoption of a child under the age of 2 years and within the United States.
If the adoptive parents decide not to go through with the adoption, the expenses are usually not covered. The coverage only applies if the birth parent changes her mind.
If the prospective adoptive parents live in a State that qualifies for adoption insurance, but adopt a child from another State, typically the policy will provide coverage as long as the policy was purchased by a resident of the State in which it was offered. Again, typically international adoptions are excluded.
There are several things prospective adoptive parents can do to avoid getting scammed by an adoption agency, adoption attorney or a birth mother.
First and foremost, check out your resources very carefully and ask for references. Ask lots of questions. A good agency or attorney welcome tough questions. One of the best ways to minimize the risk of a scam is to have a good attorney involved who can protect your rights.
Try to have a face-to-face meeting with your birth mother. As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words, but a meeting in person with a birth mother is priceless. You will learn a great deal just from meeting in person with your prospective birth mother.
One of the other things you can do is order a copy of the prenatal records. However, make sure you are ordering the prenatal records directly from the Obstetrician and not simply allowing the birth mother to order the prenatal records.
Finally, prospective adoptive parents can also ask the birth mother for a drug screen, a criminal background and employment check on the birth mother, along with checking her out on the internet, i.e. Facebook, MySpace and Twitter, to see exactly what type of person with whom you are dealing.
In the end, you have to go with your gut feelings. Your gut feelings are rarely wrong.
DO I HAVE TO CONTACT THE BIRTH FATHER? A birth mother is not required to identify the father or inform him of her pregnancy. Even if the father later finds out about the child, he only has a limited amount of time before the adoption takes place to challenge the finalization of the proceedings. As experienced adoption attorneys, we will guide you through the process and to make sure you understand the process and your options.
CUSTODY ISSUES AND FATHER’S RIGHTS: While birth mothers are not required to identify or notify the father of their child, a father can demand consideration by the court in cases where paternity can be established.
Just because a father demands custody of his unborn child does not mean that he will be awarded custody by the court. We will work with you and the prospective adoptive parents in making sure you have effective legal representation should a father attempt to assert custodial rights to your child.
PROTECTING YOUR RIGHTS: If you would like to pursue adoption for your child without creating legal complications with the father, please call us today to schedule a free consultation. We will explain what the law says, how you can protect your rights, and what can be done to avoid lengthy, complicated legal battles.
It’s natural for a birth mother to have second thoughts. Making an adoption plan for a child instead of having an abortion gives a child a chance in life, to become the world’s next great athlete, scientist, artist, business leader, or even President of the United States, like President Gerald Ford. When birth mothers aren’t emotionally or financially ready to raise a child, placing them in a loving, caring home with every opportunity available the ultimate gift of life and love and the most unselfish decision a woman could ever make.
If you have questions or concerns, you can speak directly with Tommy Taneff or schedule a free consultation to discuss how we can help you. We’re here to help you.
It’s normal for birth mothers to wonder if some day their child will understand the adoption plan. In 20 years as adoption attorney, my experience is that as children begin to mature, they recognize the advantage they wouldn’t have had they not been adopted. Far from resenting their birth mothers, most adoptees express a strong sense of affection and respect for the courage and sacrifice by their mothers in giving them a better future in a loving, secure and stable family.
If you have concerns about how your child will react to being adopted, we provide free, confidential consultations and can introduce you to our counselors and past birth mothers and adoptive parents if you like. Our network of counselors can help birth mothers work through doubts about themselves, concerns for their child, and other common issues in an understanding, compassionate setting.
Openness refers to the amount of contact and information which birth mothers and adoptive parents are comfortable sharing. A completely open adoption might include the exchange of photographs, letters, phone calls, even occasional visits. A completely confidential/closed adoption is where neither the birth nor the adoptive parents know any identifying information about each other.
Most birth mothers first like to read about prospective adoptive parents, talk with them by telephone and then meet the prospective adoptive parents in person. Some birth mothers want the prospective adoptive parents to visit with them a few times during the pregnancy and even attend some prenatal appointments.
After the baby is born, most birth mothers want to receive photographs and letters on how the baby is doing.
We can tailor an arrangement that suits your needs. All adoptive parents are happy to provide letters and photographs letting you know how the child is doing. For birth mothers who prefer not to receive updates, we can hold any pictures or letters in our file, in case you later change your mind about receiving them.
Some experts claim little, if any, effect is experienced, others disagree. See, the following website: www.afterabortion.info/psychol.html. Regardless of whether women experience psychological problems or not, many do. These can include depression, feelings of suicide, eating disorders, sexual dysfunction, and many other problems. Abortion can change a woman’s life forever. Abortion will not change the fact that you were pregnant. It is incredibly unselfish in allowing a family unable to have a child the chance to experience parenthood.
ADOPTION: IS A BLESSING IN DISGUISE: It is the most loving, caring and unselfish thing anyone could ever do. You have the opportunity to go on to college and complete your education, even becoming a mother again when the time was right.
We work closely with Court Investigators, Social Workers, and other Professionals in carefully screening prospective parents. We do thorough interviews with prospective adoptive parents to make sure they understand the love, care, and patience children need. We conduct periodic follow-ups to make sure everything is going well and provide birth mothers with updates.
We require prospective adoptive parents to undergo the following:
If there are specific qualities or attributes you are looking for in prospective adoptive parents – for instance, someone of the same faith or background as you, a stay-at-home mom, other children (or not), and etc. – we will do everything in our power to find the perfect match. No arrangements will be made unless you are completely satisfied.
We provide birth mothers with profiles of prospective adoptive parents who have been carefully screened and investigated. If a birth mother has any specific requirements of qualities she is looking for in prospective adoptive parents, we will do everything possible to find your perfect parents. In addition to providing a Profile/Lifebook with written information and photos about prospective adoptive parents, we can also arrange for the birth parent to talk by telephone or meet in person the prospective adoptive parents, to satisfy herself that she has the right family for her baby.
I believe in working one-on-one with prospective birth mothers. Not only before the adoption but years later.
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