[tonieerin]

Hi there,

I'm wondering if anyone here has any experience with the adoption of a child from Brazil... where one parent is Brazilian and the other is of a different nationality. I am Canadian and my husband is Brazilian, and we are looking to adopt a little one.

Does anyone have any experiences that they'd be willing to share?

[stephdpenn]

Hi, we are not Brazilian but my husband works in Brazil for a month at a time. He pays taxes to Brazil and has residencey.
When we decided to adopt our first choice was Brazil for many reasons. The more we checked into it, the harder it seemed to do. We were told that we could not receive a child under 3. That the adoption might take up to a couple of years at least to complete. Also that we could not specify gender. I do not know if any of this is true or not. We became very discouraged and are now adopting from China.
I would still be very interested in hearing from others myself who have adopted from Brazil as it may still be something we do in the future. I guess for our first adoption (we have 2 bio sons) we wanted something more stable than what Brazil sounded.
Good luck in getting information and making a decision.

Stephanie

[tonieerin]

Do you know why that is that they said you couldn't receive a child under 3? Because I have talked to an orphanage director (who is a personal friend) and a lawyer (also a friend) in Goias, and they both stated that there are younger children available for adoption.

Is it possible for the orphanage to request us from the CEJA list? Or do we have to wait for a match?

[E.T.]

From what little research I have done, my wife(Brasilian) and I(U.S.) should be able to without much restrictions.

I just joined this forum and will be reading and educating myself.

We don't plan to start our process for another few years though. But may want to start sooner depending on the time it will take.

A little info from the State Department:
Intercountry Adoption Brazil

[SandyKassia]

Hi,

I am Brazilian myself and my fiancee is American. I come from a family who adopted 1 older kid (14 at time of adoption), so I always dreamed of doing the same.

Our first desire was adopting from Brazil (once I am Brazilian), but it seems to be toooo expensive.

Because my mom is an adoptive mother, she talked with the person who helped when she adopted my sister, asking of informations.

The bad news is that even if we are Brazilian, we are treated as international adoption, so we need to pay the HUGE fee that these agencies ask.

There are kids with less than 3yo to be adopted. the thing is that Brazil just aproved a new adoption bill, saying that the preference is for a kid to stay in the country (even if between the adoptive parents is a Brazilian). So, when a kid is for adoption, the preference goes for couples who are inside of the country (doesnt matter if you are waiting for 2 years, and the couple is waiting for only 1 week).

If they tried in all Brazilian states (now there is a national list of families expecting to adopt) and no one wants the child, the child will be made avaliable for families in another countries.

So... it is not that there are not young kids, but there are thousands of Brazilian couples who want to adopt kids under 2. So the kids who "last" for international adoption are usually the older and/or with special needs.

Oh... you are also required to stay in Brazil from 15-30+ days, depending on your kid's age.

For me and my fiancee, it is not a problem, once our profile would be a girl, any race, up to 9yo, with up to 2 siblings... Also, stay in Brazil for a month is ok too cause I have family in there. the problem is the agency fee (soooo high)

[iamastro]

You can e-mail me with questions. I am brazilian and my husband is American. It is very difficult and almost impossible to adopt an infant from Brazil, even if one of you have brazilian citizenship. The adoption process is complicated and I do not recommend you doing it independently.
We were not able to adopt an infant in Brazil, we adopted our children from Colombia and Guatemala.
I will be glad to answer any specific questions, as I have done a lot of research on adopting from Brazil and ended up not being able to do so.
My e-mail is i_mastroluca@yahoo.com
Irene