[Happymom3]

Our home study expires in mid January 2010. I just contacted our home study agency & they sent us all of the information we need for an update. I did not realize all of the documents that we would be required to do.
Anyway, my question is, does the updated home study need to be sent to Bulgaria before our old one expires or does it have to just be sent to our agency. Any help would be greatly appreciated )

[sak9645]

If your homestudy "expires", then you do not need an update. You need what is basically a whole new homestudy, to satisfy your state's requirements. That is why all the paperwork is required. An update is used only if your circumstances change materially before you complete your adoption, or if you decide to seek approval for a child in a different age group, with a different health status, etc.

[mom4three]

So you will be doing a whole new homestudy and you will have to have it apostilled and notarized to send to Bulgaria. We just did this and sent a copy to our agency and an original to Bulgaria.

[olive123]

Ok now I'm confused. Our home study expires 18 months after it was issued (state regulations) and our I-800A expires in December. We were told to get an updated home study to submit request to USCIS to extend our I-171H an additional period. We were not told we would need to do a new home study, just an update - this update would then be good for 18 months (state regulations). We just met with our social worker 2 weeks ago who has written the home study update and submitted the draft to our adoption agency and home study agency for review. No one has mentioned needing a completely new home study?

[mom4three]

Olive123 if your homestudy isn't expired you only need an update to send in when you are asking for our 171h to be extended. We ended up doing an update to our homestudy but because we changed from i600a to i800a we had it apostilled and mailed to our agency and Bulgaria. Sorry for the confusion.