[Cristarain]

From calling one agency, the man we spoke to over the phone said that we would not need a local attorney if we are matched with a birth mother in another state. They say they will provide the attorney in that state, and all legal procedures will take place there.

This doesn't seem right to me. We already contacted an adoptions specialist lawyer in our area, and had the initial impression that whenever we bring baby back to our state, we would file all kinds of paperwork, and at least once go to the county court.

We have not actually hired our local lawyer and feel hesitant to call and ask for free legal advice. Maybe I should just suck it up and pay for an hour of her time?

[minibus]

I think that it MAY depend on the state where the baby is born. With one of our possible matches, our social worker said that the adoption could be finalized in that state while we waited for ICPC. I think that was Nebraska. In our situation, however, we brought our kids home and will need to finalize in our state, which will necessitate having an attorney here.

I would call your lawyer and ask. It's a pretty simple question - I wouldn't think that you'd have to pay for an hour of time. Depends on your lawyer, though, I guess.

[jp4ga]

We are in the process of finalization. We adopted out of state, and are going to finalize in the state in which the baby was born. We did not need a lawyer in our state, and all paperwork can be processed in the state the baby was born in. The ICPC in both states did have to review our paperwork, but no lawyer was needed for that.

Since our adoption is being contested it was easier for us to have a our lawyer and finalization in the state the baby was born in.

[sheababy]

We did not need a lawyer in our state (CO). Our social worker handled all the paperwork for the finalization. We did need an attorney in CA, where our daughter was born, to handle birthfather TPR.

[Cristarain]

Thank you to everyone who replied! I think this agency may be right. I did go ahead and asked our attorney, who actually won't be our attorney cause she didn't know enough about out-of-state adoptions -- she seemed to only handle DCFS cases and local private adoptions.

[devildogwife]

We adopted out of state (and finalized there) and didn't need one in our home state either.

[tweetybirdus]

We did domestic through an agency and aren't using a lawyer in either state and we'll be finalizing in a few weeks. It just wasn't necessary for us to use one. The paperwork is pretty straight forward. We paid for an audio class for help filling everything in properly, very simple too and it saved us a couple thousand dollars.