[The Beach Bears]

A New York Family Adoption Journal….. In waiting



February 15th

I guess this would be a good place to post thoughts, questions and maybe just think things through myself. We are waiting to find out some facts, if they do not come out well than this may be a very short journal.





Lets start in the beginning my college roommates wife’s sister had a child, she is unmarried, a substance abuser and has mental health problems. After six months with the child and several incidents the child was taken from her and placed with her mother and her step- father. They lived in New York for a while than retired to Florida. During this time we and other families expressed interest in adoption, we had just started a family of our own with a little girl just a year before. The family was under the assumption that the grandparents were making efforts with social services to place and come up with a final placement for this child, they were wrong. Fast forward to today and the Grandmother passed away unexpectedly, the grandfather who is significantly older needs to seek assisted living and sell the house in Florida and move in with my college roommate’s family until they are able to place the child and secure him a place to live. (Oh, did I mention that the college roommate’s wife is now seven moths pregnant) So they will need to be moved to another relative’s house when the baby comes. Also his name is not on the custody papers only the Grandmothers. They were going to visit a lawyer this week and take care of custody. Whew, take a breath and move on with the story.



My wife and I have always wanted to adopt, my mother and cousin were adopted and we always saw it as viable way to expand your family. We would like to adopt this child. So here is what we have done so far. We have contacted a lawyer, for that matter three. We have not met any yet because we want to be able to bring some facts to the table. So for right now lets call them lawyer A, B & C.

Lawyer A is a woman who is part of a firm and she deals with adoption for that firm, when I called she seemed to be very, very busy I give that a -, she is close to my wife’s work easy to get to that’s a +

Lawyer B is a man and has been very helpful via email that’s a + and he has been recommended by another couple ++, he is close to my work +

Lawyer C is a woman who runs her own firm + and she has emailed back (lots of typo’s and spelling errors -) She lives in the same town we do and her daughter is going to the same college my roommate and I attended, I am not sure if I should give a + for that or not.



As I said we are waiting for facts from the family, we need to know if we are the choice for this adoption (there is another couple). We need to find out if the family has been able to reestablished custody of the child in New York State. If the birth mother will relinquish her rights voluntarily, the father and his family has already been pro giving up rights. Once we find out some of these things than we would move ahead with finding a Social worker for the home study. We will also meet with all the lawyers and see what direction we want to go in. We are committed and financially ready, and just unsure of everything else.



Thanks for reading I will due weekday updates and keep updating until we had a new child in our family or not.