[tay]

this is the situation.........

My husband sister is 31 years old. She has 2 children, the oldest boy(9) is living with the grandparents, her second child (11mths) was not being taken care of and got put into foster care. The 11th month old is being adopted by a cousin. The cousin works within a foster care/adoption agency (not sure) so shes pushing all her paperwork right through to get the adoption quicker for the 11th month old. We just found out that his sister is pregnant again. My husband and i want to adopt the child she is about to have. Right now she is 70% sure shes going to adopt. (BTW she only talks and goes through her mom.. So we dont have any contact with her)

Now that i told you all most of whats going on i have a few questions..

1. Is it easier to adopt when the adoption is in the family?

2. Is the cost just as expensive as a adoption of a child that you have to go through a agency?

3. Do we have to go through a agency and have lawyers and all the other things you need?

4. How long do a adoption take if its between family?

There is a little more that i forgot to mention. Most of my husbands family live in Oklahoma. Thats also where his sister live that pregnant now. (I'm not sure when she's due to have this Kid but i think she's 5-6 months pregnant.) We live in GA. We already have 3 boys. The baby she is having is a girl.

The sister at this point we dont know if she wants to give the baby up for adoption yet. I'm just trying to find out all information in case she do. I think she is going to give it up for adoption but its not set in stone yet.

5. Is it harder to adopt between states (ok and ga)

6. do they have websites that can give me more information

As you can see i dont know a thing. I want to know and want to be prepared.
Once she says yes, shes sure 100% she wants us to adopt.

7. What is the first thing we should do to get the process rolling?

Please help!!!

[Katies_mom]

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.