[Lumpkin]

I’ve obfuscated some of the details in our adoption journey thus far due to the fact that other parties involved are pretty much crazy, and who knows what the read and how they would use anything that I might say in order to make things more difficult for us. I do truly love those who have frustrated me during this journey, but it doesn’t make it any less frustrating :/

The child that we are preparing to adopt is the child of a relative who lost parental rights due to severe neglect, abuse, etc. DHS took the child and placed the child with grandparents (my in-laws) temporarily at the parent’s request. Eventually parents would never do anything to get the child back, moved away, and gave up on getting the child back.

We were asked by the grandparents if we would adopt, if it became necessary. We said we would, even though our family is about grown and we were just about ready to live our adult lives without children in the nest. We have no regrets for taking on a child again, but it was not even close to being something that we’d previously considered. Well TPR’s are done, the grandparents have vacillated back and forth as to whether they want us to adopt or if they want to continue to parent the child (grandparents are in their 70’s with health problems, and there is some doubt that they would be allowed to adopt, given their previously unverified DHS history). We’ve continued to take the child every weekend for 8 months now, up to 4-5 days a week now. Finally the grandparents recently said “okay, go file the papers, we realize the child deserve a mom and dad” (probably more to do with the fact that the final TPR specified adoption as the “required” permanency for the child, and they are not financially prepared for adoption yet).

SO… we go get an attorney and deal with the great mess that grandparents have made through this process (long story including many lies, manipulations, etc that make the process of approval harder for us). We get a court date, our lawyer calls them and tells him that he needs their signature (they already told him over the phone in a recorded statement that they would not contest the adoption). They refuse to sign because they want to keep the child a couple more months in order to ensure that they can take the tax credit this year, and so that they can get another few months of financial assistance. I just about literally threw up when my attorney called me to tell me that they wanted to stop everything for a tax credit, and that I literally had about an hour to let him know if we were going to move forward (otherwise he was taking us off the schedule and giving up our spot). I mean, they know that we’re an emotional wreck trying to deal with the uncertainty of whether this will ever happen, and they already know the child is not coping well with the current living situation (and need parents who will focus on his delayed development/etc)

I called the grandparents to try to see what the real issue was. I was stern, but never yelled.. just reiterated that this was important and that we really needed to resolve this issue immediately (I was told that getting another court date would be months out due to vacations/etc in our small community, and that they would take us off the court schedule that afternoon if we didn’t come to an agreement). Nobody wanted to talk about it, and now they tell me that I am verbally abusive and not a fit parent! My goodness, I’ve had more heated discussions with my pastoral leaders than I had with my in-laws that afternoon! I also told them that if they would do this to us and the child now, that we couldn’t go through with waiting another couple months, only to have them come up with another excuse then – so now they also think that I don’t love the child enough, just because I expressed my frustration and desire to “give up” on the adoption, and don’t think I’d be a fit parent afterall.

After all is said and done, I simply agree to let them take the tax credit – which I had no problem with from the beginning (but after thinking about it, I did start getting upset thinking they would get the credit, after getting all expenses for the child paid by the state.. and I’d not get the credit, after paying for the adoption, paying all expenses, and paying for daycare out of our pockets), and they say something like “oh… okay.. we’ll I suppose that’s fine then!”. We agree that they’ll make it to the lawyer by noon to sign the paperwork. At noon, lawyer calls and they never showed. We have no idea at this point if they will ever sign.

We’ve lost all hope of making our court date next week, and now we have to go pickup the child for our weekend visit… and who knows what will happen.. I almost cannot think of looking at the grandparents (which is why we told them from the beginning that we would only do this if everyone in the family – extended/etc – agreed that is was the best thing.. so that there would be no family feuding) .. and I almost can’t stand the thought of bringing the child home with us for the next 4 days, not knowing whether the child we’ve come to think of as our own will now become only a visitor in our home again. And of course, what if grandparents won’t even let us take the child to spend the weekend with us at all? (of course this would be bad for the child who has bonded with us, but the grandparents haven’t had a great track record of caring about others lately)

In another thread recently, I said that my biggest fear is to not have control. Yep, It’s here, and it sucks, and I don’t see anyway around this one today…

[jren]

Sorry you're dealing with all of this!

[nikkianni]

Oh Lumpkin, I'm so sorry. I'll be thinking of you and little boy. I truly hope they can be brought around to doing what is best for him.

[Lumpkin]

Update:
Went to pickup child from grandparents and we pretended like nothing happened and nothing was said, and that we expected everything was fine. We didn't mention that we'd understood that the grandparents broke their promise and didn't sign the papers or anything.

I picked up the child as always when the arms flew up and demanded that I do so, loved the heck outta the child and just about cried not knowing how everything was going to end (hey, guys can get teary-eyed too!). After some small talk with the family, the grandparents asked when we'd like to start moving the child's toys and such into the room at our home (like the room at our home is not full of toys already.. but sure, there are some that are favorites that would be good to have at home).

I just got a call this afternoon that grandparents just signed the paperwork. Our attorney says that she's pulling some strings to get us on the court schedule for the end of next week. SO, a rotten couple days that seemed like everything was falling apart just turned around. Now we just have to get through the next week without any major issues!

Thanks so much for your support!

[jren]

OMG! That ending was a shocker! I'm sure for you, too. (Thank goodness you didn't start out saying something to them.) Congrats!!!

[Gwen72]

Wow, I'm glad things have turned around for you. I'll keep my fingers crossed that you get your court date soon and the in laws don't back out again.