Hi Tay,
My husband and I are going to adopt my cousin's baby once she is born. We live in Indiana and my cousin lives in Ky. but she is going to move in with us next week and stay and deliver the baby in Indiana. That way she is considered an Indiana resident and the baby will be an Indiana resident. That will make the adoption intrastate and hence, much easier.
I can only tell you about Indiana, but it's something :-)
We are using a private attorney, normally it would cost $2500, but since we don't make a lot of money, we qualified for a volunteer lawyer, so this is only costing us court costs.
We can't file for adoption until the baby is born, I really don't understand that, I think if we went through an agency, we would file before she was born, to adopt child A, and have the homestudy and all that before, but since it is a private adoption, we will file for legal guardianship before she is born, so that we can make medical decisions and bring her home from the hospital ourselves. Then we will file for adoption and have a homestudy and all that business.
I do know since the adoption is a family adoption, our county will only charge $100 for the homestudy instead of $300-$500. And all told, I think it will take about 6 months.
We have to have the natural mom and dad sign papers before she is born to get legal guardianship, I am not sure the mom will be able to sign away her rights before she is born, but I am pretty sure the dad will. We had to do a major internet search to find him because my cousin didn't know where he was. That was fun.....I had to use marriage records to find his mom to find him.
Ok, that is probably more than you wanted to know, sorry
I hope some of this helps and you are able to adopt this baby.
I wish you all the best and if I can clarify anything I said for you, please just ask.