What I've Learned About Adopting A Child

To preface this a bit, we weren't looking to adopt a child. Think of it as the proverbial baby in a basket left on your doorstep, only with a seven year old. The very first thing I learned was to call around a lot. I really had no clue as to where to start when we decided to take in Ana. Luckily, my sister Amy used to work for CPS in Arizona and had some contacts there. Through her recommendation we found a lawyer there who told us what we needed initially to take Ana back home with us to Chicago. Basically, he told me to get a POA and have it notarized. So I looked online at a bunch of different (and free) POA's and finely found one that suited me, printed it off, flew to AZ, had Ana's mom sign it and then flew home with Ana. We met with the lawyer there too and signed the contract with him. He later drafted the parental rights relinquishment document and Ana's mom went in to sign that the next weekend. This was all the easy part.Our lawyer in AZ told us we'd have to find a lawyer in Illinois as well. So when I returned home, I tried a lawyer that was a friend of a lawyer in our ward, but that didn't work out. I also had contacted the state office to see what was required because the lawyer in AZ really didn't know that much about inter-state adoptions. In fact, he didn't know that inter-state adoptions was regulated by a whole mass of laws requiring a bunch of extra paperwork, etc (he had never done one before). I found that out myself bit by bit. Anyway the state office wasn't much help except in confirming that we really needed another lawyer here in IL and that it was against the law to move a child across state lines without a homestudy and placement being approved first. Oops. However, they said it was okay as this was a rather unique case in that she was a relative. Eventually, while looking online for information, I came across some adoption websites for IL, found a list of lawyers specializing in adoptions, and after calling several that were nearby, I picked the one I liked the best and was the least expensive. Basically, by saying I liked her the best, it was according to the criteria that she actually returned my message promptly, seemed knowledgeable about the inter-state adoption process and gave me more information about it than any person to date, and seemed really nice. She also charged $1500 plus court costs, which is wonderful. (I had been quoted $35,000 by one office I called.) This is, by the way, what's called a private adoption, which are much more inexpensive than most adoptions. And in case anyone is interested, my lawyer here is Sheila Maloney and here's a link to her website. I highly recommend her. I'll withhold the name of my lawyer in AZ because frankly, I wasn't very impressed by him. Quite the opposite actually. However, it was his first inter-state adoption and he kindly reduced some of his usual charges for me so I don't really want to give him bad publicity either.

Anyhow, after talking to Sheila and signing a contract with her, she told me to contact Lutheran Child and Family Services for a homestudy. The social worker we worked with there, Leni, was awesome!!! She walked us through the whole rest of the process. This involved several things: we (meaning Leo and I) had to go in and meet with her, we signed a ton of paperwork, she talked to each of us individually, etc. We then had to complete some of the requirements: Leo had to get CPR certified (I already was), we had to be fingerprinted, get FBI background checks done, and do some adoption training--we did ours online. Then we met with Leni again in person, answered some more questions, and then she came one day and visited our apartment and met with Ana. I think Leo and I met with her three times total, and we answered questions regarding everything from how our marriage was and how we solved our problems (that was funny because I had slept on the couch the night before after one of the worst fights in our entire marriage--it was the only time I'd ever done that--and we had barely begun speaking to each other again on the drive over there in the car) to how many siblings we had, their ages and occupations to how our own parents disciplined and what our own childhood was like. We also had to have three written recommendations from people who were not related to us. After all that, Leni sent the homestudy packet to our AZ lawyer for him to submit the interstate documents to the state of AZ. This was a whole mess, because he kept being obtuse and not taking my hints on what he was required to do, and finally our lawyer here talked to him and flat out told him it had to come from the AZ side of things since that's where the mother resided. Months later, he finally got around to submitting it. Meanwhile he did get the father's parental rights relinquishment translated to Spanish which we sent to Leo's Uncle Eduardo, who is a lawyer as well, in Colombia. Eduardo tracked down Ana's father for us and had him sign the relinquishment. All that was processed by both AZ and IL and finally approved, so we should have been able to set a court date and be done with it all, only Sheila informed us we needed documentation from Colombia saying we followed all their laws. Ruff. The silly part of that is had I known that before we could have had it already done, and I had had this niggling worry in the back of my brain that we'd need something like this, but instead of asking, I hoped we'd slide by without it. Errr.... So that's what we're waiting for now. Just FYI, Leo called the governmental department in charge of that down there and they said we were okay, only to get it in writing it would take at best 45 days. Leni's already been out to do the postplacement study. The court hearing is basically ceremonial from what Leni told me and then the judge may decide to have a "testing time" of Ana living with us for a few months before it's completely finalized,but we're hoping not since she's already been living with us so long. And that's what I've learned of adopting a child in a nutshell. Good luck if you're adopting a child. I wish you as little paperwork as possible!