Understanding the Adoption Process
Hello, I’m attorney Palmer Johnson. I specialize in family law matters with a particular focus on helping mothers navigate legal proceedings that affect their families. Another area of law that I am very passionate about is adoption. I’m going to talk about adoption at a kind of high level today and what that looks like.
There’s a lot of different scenarios and ways that an adoption can occur, but I’m going to talk about today specifically an infant that’s being placed with two non-biological parents and what that process might look like and what you could expect. This would be a situation where someone who is pregnant has decided they would want to place their child for adoption and they’ve selected you as the prospective parents.
Consent and Guardianship
During the birth mother’s term of pregnancy, you can provide her with some support and assistance with things like medical needs, but you can’t essentially provide so much support or gifts or promises of things that are inducing her to place the child for adoption. That’s going to be kind of the test because you’ll have to disclose all of these expenses to the court. When the child is born, the birth mother will go before a judge shortly after she’s released from the hospital and she will give the consent to the adoption and also find out who the father is if it’s not already been established or you need more information about that because both parents’ rights are going to have to be terminated even if the mother is consenting.
Termination of Parental Rights
After the consent is received, then a temporary custody order or guardianship will be given to the prospective adopting parents. They’ll have physical custody of this baby during the pendency of the matter. The father’s parental rights will need to be terminated and if we know who that is, then we can find out if they consent or object to the adoption. They would be noticed of the proceedings to terminate their parental rights and oftentimes when these types of decisions are made, it’s in conjunction with the birth mother and the father may also consent.
Ready to Start the Adoption Process?
If you are contemplating adoption or find yourself in a situation where someone’s approached you and you have questions about what you legally can and can’t do and need assistance with the legal side of that process, please reach out to me at moms.law. I absolutely love doing these types of cases and really see that as such a positive part of the family law practice, so always advocate for really positive, happy, consented to adoptions.