Thanks for the comments and encouragement!
The grandmother wants to adopt, but realizes that being in her 70’s would make it difficult for her to raise the child and would make it difficult for the child to have the same benefits of a child raised by parents in their 30’s (we already take the child several days at a time, in order to give her a break and allow her to rest and catch up on household chores/etc). She realizes it is selfish of her to want to adopt, but vacillates between wanting to keep the child due to the bond that she feels with him, and wanting to adopt him to family members that would allow her to remain as a grandparent. Honestly, the grandparents would not pass the background check, as the grandparents have a history of abuse (physical and sexual) of their own children, which DHS does not currently know about due to the fact that they did no background checks on them.
As far as being represented in court before the TPR, our situation is different than yours, as we are not actually a party to the CPS/DHS plan as of right now. The Grandparents have an attorney, but actually we are not allowed to talk to DHS or the court directly since we are not part of the current process. The courts are closed to us, as they are held in chambers, and the only parties involved are the parents of the child, the grandparents (as guardians), the attorneys for parents/child/grandparents/DHS, and the guardian ad-lietem (also the child’s attorney, I believe). So far, we are bystanders waiting for our chance to be heard (although it is our understanding that our names have been mentioned as the desired adoptive family in the last TPR hearing). DHS has spoken with our family once after the last TPR since we were caring for the child during the court hearing, and DHS wanted to check on the child after court.
As far as attorney costs, I am hopeful that the expense is not too tremendous, but we have saved back about $15k since the beginning of the year in anticipation of various adoption costs. Of course I don’t want to just toss good money out the window, which is why I wonder if I should go ahead and start plopping down money for attorney fees now, and have the paperwork readied by the time the court is over for the 2nd parent’s TPR (realizing that there is a chance of TPR not going through as planned), or if I should wait. I’m wondering if they will accept my petition for adoption without the accompanying home study/etc, as that could take quite some time. I know that DHS can move things along a little quicker, but the indication is that they are rather busy, and this case isn’t a priority for them since the child is placed with a family right now.
Our wonderful experience, so far, has been to sign up for the required classes. The class administrator sent us a packet of info and said that we were to turn it in on the day of orientation for the class. On orientation day ( 6 weeks later, and a week before actual classes start) , they take the packet and double-check everything. Then they say, oh yes, we don’t do the background checks locally anymore, so we’ll send them off today and hope they are done in time for the class since we can’t let you start the class until the background checks come back. Guess what? They didn’t come back yet. And when they come back, I found out that they have to be sent back out for another several weeks for review, due to one minor DCI hit that we all know is coming.
Since the child is involved with DHS, I’m not sure that I have any other options than to go through their program for adopting the child. If I thought plopping down 5k with an agency would get us immediate attention (i.e. get our background/homestudy/psmapp courses done in a few weeks time), then I’d go that route. However, I doubt that there will be much that can be done outside the slow route we are following now. (you’d think they’d make a way to speed the process up once you have a “match” so that families would not get so discourage, and so the children can be placed and move on with their lives as soon as possible)
Today, I’m thinking that I’d best go get an attorney started. I have a family acquaintance who is actually an attorney who works with family court in another city who offered to help us through the process, but I feel awkward asking for his assistance since we barely know him. Thus, I’ll probably see about getting an attorney locally, who is familiar with the local courts, and maybe even one who works for the same firm as the one that the Grandparents use (hoping that some familiarity with the case will help). I suppose if TPR for the 2nd parent fails, it’s only money wasted
