[SGT]

Dear Members,

I am new to adoption and forum. I am Indian origin living in NJ. We have 17 month old son and planning to adopt a baby girl from India.

We will become US citizens next year. As I am approching 40 years mark in 2007, I would like to utilize my time to complete necessary tasks.

What can I do at this stage towards adoption process? If I do any process or paper work, would it be valid for year or two?

I would appreciate, if some one can guide us to proper procedures and agency.

Thanks,

SGT

[spaypets]

Congratulations on your upcoming citizenship.

If you haven't already, start researching agencies, both for the homestudy and for the international adoption.

Gather your birthcertificates (3 original copies) and marriage licenses.

Check with your homestudy agency to make sure there aren't changes that need to be done to your house (fences, smoke detectors).

Check to see if your physician has a notary -- if not look for traveling notaries (it is a huge pain to get physician forms notarized if there's no notary in the office).

Start thinking about people who can write your references. For us, we needed 3 people who weren't related to us. Also, we had to choose someone to be our child's guardian if something happened to us.

Homestudies expire after a year, INS fingerprints after 15 months, and since the process can take that long at least, you don't want to do those things too soon (both our homestudy and fingerprints expired before we brought DD home).

Good luck!

[Julie KS]

Just wanted to mention that we got all our certified copies of birth and marriage certificates as well as a certified copy of my divorce decree early in the process, only to find out while we were putting our dossier together that the Secretary of State wouldn't accept them because they were too old. We had to get newer certified copies, costing us more money. Not alot of money in the grand scheme of things, but annoying nonetheless.

Julie

[CK Chalekode]

SGT:

Welcome to the world of adoption!

While adoption is the noblest thing to do, there are myriads of regulations to comply with - in the US and India. So be prepared for the long arduous process but believe me, in the end - just like Indian movies, there IS a happy ending.

Suggest that you visit www.rkas.org (Raji Krishna
Adoption Seva) and www.ichild.org to find answers to
your question on adoption. These websites cover most of the issues.

Feel free to send me an email if you have ???

Best wishes,

CK Chalekode
www.rkas.org