Adoption is a complex legal process. Adoptions are legally binding in nearly all cases, except where fraud can be proved; so it's important for couples to follow all the rules in adopting to make sure that the adoption into which they are entering is properly executed. Once an adoption is finalized, the birth certificate is changed and the adoptive parents become the legal parents of the child.
Narrow Your Options
There are several different types of adoption. You may adopt domestically, internationally or through the foster care system. If you decide to adopt domestically, you may choose to have an open adoption, where identifying information is given to both the birth family and the adoptive family, or a closed adoption, where those things are kept secret. If you want to adopt internationally, you need to choose a country.
Find an Agency or Lawyer
Find an agency or lawyer to facilitate the adoption. Get recommendations from friends or visit potential facilitators to find out about costs, time frames and requirements and to see how your personality meshes with the lawyer or agency social worker. Adoption.com reports that requirements for international adoptions change frequently, so make sure to find an agency with an established program in the country of your choice.
Get Documents Together
The most important document in an adoption is your home study, and its completion is required by all adoptive parents, according to Child Welfare Information Gateway. This document is used to approve you for adoption and includes financial information, autobiographies of your family, home inspection, interviews with a social worker, medical information and child abuse and criminal clearances. An adoption education class is usually part of a home study, too. International adoption requires additional paperwork specific to the country, gathered into a dossier. Your adoption facilitator can tell you what documentation is needed and how to obtain it.
Wait for a Child
Once your documents have been submitted and you are approved to adopt, adoption becomes a waiting game. Birth mothers in the U.S. usually choose the people who will parent her child, while children in other countries are usually matched with adoptive parents by orphanages or government agencies. In some cases international adoptions allow the parents to choose a child that meets their criteria of age, health and gender. Foster care adoption is almost always for a child who has been chosen by the adoptive parents.
Finalize the Adoption
Once the child is in your custody, the finalization process can begin. Some adoptive parents need to travel to another country to pick up the child and finalize the adoption, which requires a multi-day or week stay. Interstate domestic adoption requires the adoptive family to stay in the child's birth state until an Interstate Compact Agreement can be signed.
Finalization in a domestic adoption can take up to a year, and foster care adoption can take longer, according to adoptuskids.org. All paperwork must be gathered and filed before finalization can occur. However, parental rights are usually terminated within days of placement (or before placement, in the case of foster care adoption), and once that occurs it is unlikely that the finalization will not be completed. Birth parents do have a small window of time--usually between 48 hours and 30 days, depending on the state--to rescind the termination of their parental rights, but that happens only in a small percentage of cases. Once that deadline has passed, finalization can be scheduled.
