[selowitch]

Alarmingly, CCAA's website has this document on it under International Adoption --> FAQs:

http://www.china-ccaa.org/site%5Cinfocontent%5CSWSY_20051009022651140_en.htm

In it, they state (excerpted) in part:

Originally Posted by www.china-ccaa.org

Source: CCAA
Posted: October 2005
Q. What requirements should adopters meet?
(1)Childless.
　"By childless" is meant to indicate that the adopters have neither biological children, nor any adopted children, nor step-children.

This can't be right, can it??!! We were accepted by my agency in February 2006, five months after this document was supposedly posted. We are approaching our DTC date. There is no way they would have accepted my wife and me (we have a biological eight-year-old son) as clients had this been true. My questions are:

1. What in the blazes is this document doing there if it is not accurate?
2. Why doesn't CCAA update/edit its website?
3. Why would CCAA expose themselves to the kind of headaches that an error like this undoubtedly produces?
4. If it is somehow true that childlessness is a requirement for China adoption, does that mean our quest is dead in the water?

[Korrie Sue]

Somebody correct me if I am wrong but I believe that the 'old rules' were...people who already had children could only adopt via the SN route.

This may be left over from the old rules.

[specialk4b]

selawitch, as to your question 4, I know of lots of people with biological children who've adopted and it's fine. I wouldn't worry about it - it's probably just outdated or unenforced information on the CCAA site.

As to questions 1-3, I will add them to the list of questions I would love to ask the CCAA, unfortunately that's not going to happen. I think that the best someone like me (or you) can do is ask our agency.

[selowitch]

Originally Posted by b&k898

selawitch, as to your question 4, I know of lots of people with biological children who've adopted and it's fine. I wouldn't worry about it - it's probably just outdated or unenforced information on the CCAA site.

Well, okay. That's reassuring. But isn't it bizarre that this info would be there?

I think that the best someone like me (or you) can do is ask our agency.

All they could tell me is that it wasn't true. That's good news. But the part I can't get past and can't accept is that CCAA publishes rules on its website that are inaccurate or were never enacted or whatever. That makes me extremely nervous.

[Petsitter]

Is it possible that is a rule for domestic Chinese adoption?

[oleson1]

Originally Posted by Petsitter

Is it possible that is a rule for domestic Chinese adoption?

That would make sense.

[Lissa]

It has less to do with domestic vs. international and more to do with orphan status. In clause 5 it states the following:

5、Orphans, disabled children or abandoned infants and children, who are raised in the social welfare institutes, and whose biological parents can not be ascertained or found, may be adopted irrespective of the restrictions that the adopter should be childless and adopt one child only.

All of us are adopting either SN children or children who were legally declared orphans, so it doesn't apply to us.

[specialk4b]

Ahh, Lissa - thanks for actually doing the research. (You're a university type, aren't you?)