I don't think this really belongs in the adoption forum because it seems like everyone there is doing non-family adoptions and won't know the answer to my question.
So! For those of you who've had experience with stepparent adoptions. My DH is not DS's biological father but we're in the process of the stepparent adoption. We have our home visit with social services on Tuesday and then... what? Everything else that our lawyer told us about is done, so is this the end? After this, we get to go before the judge to have it legally finalized? (I have no doubt that the home visit will get a positive report!) Or is there some other step we weren't told about? How close, time wise, are we to the end? I'd love to have this finished up before the LO arrives and, as I'm due smack-dab in the middle of August and DS came 2 weeks early all on his own, that could be as soon as the end of July. Is it reasonable to believe we could be finished up with this before then? I'm just so excited to be this close to the end! Tell me what happened for you after your home visit!
:bliss: :fami01: :bliss:
fawnlovesjasper
06-30-2008, 07:18 AM
I normally don't post here, but saw this and wanted to respond.
I'm not sure where you all are.. but here is what we went through. First I was paying for all of it, so I made DS1's bio father sign notorized papers that if he backed out before it was all said and done he was going to be paying me back all we put out (about $600 bucks total, not a huge amount but enough). Then we went to the notory once again.. this time with a packet of papers from my lawyer. They were the papers to terminate my ex's paternal rights. After they were signed we had to wait 3 months.. that was his time to be able to change his mind.. and because he loves to make my life horrible I held my breath the entire 3 months. After that we had to wait for our court date (about another month or 2), we went in the judges chamber, just DS1, me, hubby and our lawyer, talked for about 5 minutes with the judge and he signed the papers. Our lawyer filed them with the prothonotary and we got our copies a week or 2 later. The lawyer took care of getting our new birth certificate, but we had to take that and the adoption papers to social security to get his name changed on his card.
We didn't have a home study or any thing like that because it was considered a private adoption. My advice is to make sure you have a lawyer who is very pro adoption.. our lawyer had 3 adopted children of his own. They tend to do the adoption for a much lower cost.
Good luck.. it was the best thing we could have ever done!!!
mamoo3
06-30-2008, 12:37 PM
Our's was pretty simple, it didn't even require any home visits. We began the process immediately after dh and I were married. The law here requires that the child live with the stepparent for 6 monthes before the court will allow an adoption. My dd's biological father had never seen her or paid a penny in child support, we would have been able to claim abandonment if he had not signed away his rights. Luckily he did sign them away, after thinking it over for a weekend! After all was signed we just waited for our six monthes to be up and got a court date. The adoption went through less than one week before my 2nd dd was born! I hope everything goes smoothly for you.:goodvibes:
amphibology29
06-30-2008, 01:01 PM
I normally don't post here, but saw this and wanted to respond.
I'm not sure where you all are.. but here is what we went through. First I was paying for all of it, so I made DS1's bio father sign notorized papers that if he backed out before it was all said and done he was going to be paying me back all we put out (about $600 bucks total, not a huge amount but enough). Then we went to the notory once again.. this time with a packet of papers from my lawyer. They were the papers to terminate my ex's paternal rights. After they were signed we had to wait 3 months.. that was his time to be able to change his mind.. and because he loves to make my life horrible I held my breath the entire 3 months. After that we had to wait for our court date (about another month or 2), we went in the judges chamber, just DS1, me, hubby and our lawyer, talked for about 5 minutes with the judge and he signed the papers. Our lawyer filed them with the prothonotary and we got our copies a week or 2 later. The lawyer took care of getting our new birth certificate, but we had to take that and the adoption papers to social security to get his name changed on his card.
We didn't have a home study or any thing like that because it was considered a private adoption. My advice is to make sure you have a lawyer who is very pro adoption.. our lawyer had 3 adopted children of his own. They tend to do the adoption for a much lower cost.
Good luck.. it was the best thing we could have ever done!!!
I'm sorry your ex gave you such a hard time... :hugs:
My son's biological father has been completely wonderful about it all. He agreed to sign his rights over from the get go and had the paperwork returned to us in less than a week. We don't really have a lawyer per say, because it was completely uncontested and DS's bio father never paid child support or had any sort of custody. We had a lawyer on base (DH is military) draw up the formal paperwork for us, but once it was submitted to the county court it became "our thing." We're working directly with the county to have it all finished; we haven't worked through the lawyer since early May, when we started the process.
