[wcfrancis]

We are in Florida and are proceeding with an open adoption which is apparently unusual for our state. We are curious as to what typical contact guidelines are for an open adoption or if there are any resources for a general contact agreement? Any help or guidance would be appreciated! Thanks!!

[SchmennaLeigh]

Do a google search for open adoption contracts. Not much will come up.

Discuss with the child's Mother what you ALL feel would be an appropriate amount of contact and come to an agreement with the understanding that things may ebb and flow over time.

You can have as much or as little contact as you would like.

[BarbaraB]

Hi wcfrancis,

We have an open adoption here in FL and I have a few friends with various degrees of openness. Our situation is fully open. My experience with our agency, which I was happy with overall, was that they really did not know what to do with us. I think they do more of what might be called "semi open," where the adoptive and birth parents meet without exchanging full names and addresses, and then send pictures and letters through the agency. Their practice in any kind of "open" situation is to come up with an agreement, which I support in principle. Everyone knows it's not legally binding, but there is an element of commitment if you're willing to promise something in writing. The social worker working with our son's birth mother (who had very limited experience with open adoptions) got too involved being a go-between between me and our son's birth mom, and kept writing things that were much stricter than either of us needed. I was very torn, because I thought the birth mom (that sounds very impersonal and I don't mean it to -- I'm just avoiding names) really SHOULD talk to someone besides me, and yet I finally got exasperated and just called her directly to say look, here's why I can't sign what the social worker drafted. Once we spoke directly with each other we realized we were pretty much in agreement.

I think we ended up with an agreement that said we would provide pictures regularly and would be open to visits from the birth mother and her parents around the time of my son's birthday. We were open to much more than that, but that was the "minimum" she wanted. I actually haven't looked it in a long time because we keep in touch more often than we technically agreed to, but it's there as a reminder, I guess.

My general suggestion would be to agree on what you want to happen in the near future and then "agree to agree" after that. I also think it's a good idea to try to express your agreement in positive language -- talk about what you "will" do rather than what you "won't." Later on your child may ask you about it or even ask to see it, and it will speak volumes about how you felt about and treated his/her birth parents.

Feel free to e-mail me privately if you would like to talk about it some more. I'm sure this is a very exciting time for you!

Barbara

[wcfrancis]

Thank you both for the replies! We are just a week or so from the delivery due date and can't wait. We are excited, anxious, scared, and elated all at once. Thanks for your support!