[shy_bear]

legally free children how soon after placement did the state start telling you finalization needed to occur? On the web site for the county we are working with it says a child is in the home a minimum of one year before finalization occurs, but we have heard from others that is not true. Since we have opened our age range we are expecting to be looking at kids who are legally free, but we are wanting to go slow.

[lovemy6]

In most states you can file the intent to adopt six months after the child is in your home. From there it can take 3-6 months to finalize. Reports to the state have to be written by the sw's, papers have to be filled out and filed by the lawyers, some states have waiting periods for the state to process the intent to adopt papers. I'd say in most cases it will take up to a year to adopt after the child is placed in your home.

[msdoie]

Our son was 6 months old when he was legally free. We adopted him when he was 11 months old.

[rtsmedley]

We are in CO. We were placed with our children, who were 4 and 2 at the time. We were told that they had to be in our home for 6 months. We pushed to have it sooner. Our new daughter was turning 5 and we expressed that we really wanted to be a forever family by the time she was 5.They came on May 24th and we finalized on November 12. (2002) So it was no quite 6 months. By the way, she turned five 2 weeks later.

We knew that they fit in so well with us, it was like they had been with us for ever!

[ALI143]

My dd was placed in October at 11 months old. The judge wanted her finalized by this June, but DHS was stalled so it'll probably be August to October. They had originally told me 6 months, but changed their answer to one year.