How To Choose An Adoption Attorney
No https://jareddome644.trexgame.net/the-role-of-a-car-accident-lawyer-in-anchorage-protecting-your-rights-and-interests-13 matter where you are in the adoption process, whether you have just started your Home Study or have already connected with a Birthparent, choosing an attorney to help you through the process is one of the most important choices you will have to make. I have worked in adoptions for over nine years and I want to stress to you that choosing an attorney that specializes in adoptions or has significant adoption experience is highly important. Although as an agency we do a lot of the legal work ourselves with our own attorney, we also conduct Home Studies for couples who are doing independent adoptions, meaning they are going through an attorney rather than an agency. Most of the mix-ups and botched adoptions we see are typically associated with attorneys that do not practice adoption law or who know very little about adoption law.
When choosing an attorney to use in an independent adoption, I always recommend choosing one that is a member of the American Academy of Adoption Attorneys (also known as AAAA or Quad A Attorneys). Adoption law is typically state specific except for a few federal laws, so you want an adoption attorney that is well versed in the adoption laws of your state. Things get even more complicated if Birthparents live in one state and the adoptive family lives in another. This is called an interstate adoption. Not only are you dealing with the laws in each state, but you are also dealing with the Interstate Compact on the Placement of Children, a Federal law that regulates children being placed for adoption in a different state than where they were born. The adoption disruptions that we see played out in the media typically happen because something was not done legally the way it was supposed to be done. For this reason it is imperative that you use an attorney that knows the adoption laws for your state.
I teach monthly adoption seminars, which include a section on adoption law. During this session I always share the example of how both the lawyer and judge in a rural county in my state did not do things correctly, which https://travisqujg048.yousher.com/corruption-and-transparency-1 ended in an adoption disruption. In this case the adoption was finalized in Juvenile Court, which cannot happen in my state as adoptions are finalized in Chancery or Fourth Circuit Court. But, even worse, the Birthmother never signed a Surrender to surrender her parental rights. You cannot finalize an adoption if one or both of the Birthparents still have parental rights to the child. Since her parental rights were still in place, when she went to the court five years later the adoption was overturned and her daughter was returned to her.
