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I adopted from Russia as a single parent. It took a few months to get the dossier done. Multiple copies of everything were required, with notary stamps and apostilles. Luckily a friend's daughter was a Notary and notarized most of the forms for me. I ordered most of the Birth Certificates, Marriage Liscenses, even the divorce decree from my 1st marriage from on-line sources which made the process a lot faster, even though it cost more money. Even though I overnighted the forms to the state(s) for apostille that took up to 6 weeks. So for some of the forms I drove them myself to the state capital for apostille, it took only a few minutes once I got to the apostille office. After I sent the dossier in to the agency coincidentally the Russian authorities put all foreign adoptions on hold for a period of months, so the whole thing too about a year and a half. You have no control over when the Ministry of Education (the Russian governmental group that handles adoptions) calls you to come to Russia. And you MUST go when they schedule you to go or you lose your adoption chance (this is what I was told). There are two trips. The first one to meet the child they've choosen for you and to begin the adoption process in the Russian courts in Moscow (I was told that all Russian adoptions go through the Moscow court only). And the second trip to finalize the process. At that time (2005) the 2nd trip required a 10 business day waiting period (ended up about 14 days because weekends do not count) before the adoption date set by the court was finalized--then we were able to get a passport for her and leave Russia--the whole 2nd trip took about a month. IO adopted an older child (she was 6 at the time) so I don't know if the process is faster for infants (don't think so). I have nothing against infant adoptions but I would highly recommend adopting an older child simply because there are so many of them living in orphanages, not only in Russia, but also in other countries around the world. I got to meet 3 other couples that were adopting older children while in Russia and got to see more than one orphanage, there were 200 to 300 children at each orphanage (babies are kept at separate 'baby orphanages'). There were so many beautiful, lonely children who wanted loving families. I still can see the many faces. i wish I could give them all loving homes.
sallypz
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