More on surrender & adoption
Katie said:
in many cases when the birthmother signs has nothing to do with when the adoption becomes finalized/irrevocable. i had to appear in court 48 hours after jonathan was born to orally & by signature waive my rights … but the adoption wasn’t truly finalized for another six months, despite both my appearance and the birthfather waiving his rights within that 48 hours.
This is a good point because it can all be confusing.
Here in Ohio and with our agency, the soonest birth parents can relinquish is 72 hours but, of course, they can take longer. Most, like Kate, don’t want to wait because they don’t want to put the baby in foster care during that time and they don’t feel prepared to take baby home. There are a few hospitals around here that will board a newborn for some time but not all of them will.
Also, our adoption won’t be finalized for six months either but if Madison was taken from us, she would not automatically go to J. The fact that J. has signed away her parental rights means that if Brett and I were found to be inadequate parents, Madison would be in the custody of the agency. They could then find other parents for her. In other words, J.’s surrender of parental rights is a separate issue from her adoption. Weird, eh?
Our agency visits us once a month but the visits are nominal. Our social worker comes and asks how we’re doing. Makes notes about Madison’s height and weight and picks up proof that we’re doing the recommended well-baby check-ups. We also need to inform them if we leave the state because they are required to know where the babies are at all times.
I don’t know what it would take to make us lose Madison but I think it would have to be big and bad and ugly. Other than making sure we’re doing the well-baby checks, not smoking around her and that one of us was home with her for six weeks, the agency actually has very little to say about our care of Madison. For example, they haven’t made us get a crib (we co-sleep so we don’t have one). I was relieved to discover this. I was afraid we were going to have to make it look like she had her own room since I know this is an issue in foster care.
During these six months, we could also give Madison back to the agency without repercussion because the adoption hasn’t been finalized. (Obviously, this has never even entered our minds!!!! Well, it might occasionally wander into Noah’s mind.) The most recent time this happened was when a child proved to have very severe health issues and the potential adoptive family felt they couldn’t provide the care she needed. The agency networked with other agencies and found a waiting family who was looking to adopt a child with extreme special needs.
I don’t think it’s fair at all that the birth family wouldn’t be considered for the next placement should the adoptive family prove not to be up to the task. I’ll ask the social worker next time about their policies in contacting the birth parents about it.
The reason that J. wouldn’t be next in line is that she has been effectively erased from Madison’s life in a legal sense. Again, her surrender of parental rights has nothing to do with our assumption of parental rights. I wonder, though, if this is different in states where open adoptions are legally enforceable. Would a birth parent there have a say in the next placement?
As an aside, at our agency, J. did not have to go to court. The social workers video tape the legal surrender so that the birth parents can choose not to appear before a judge. Obviously they can appear anyway if they want to but most are relieved to be able to do the surrender privately.
if i recall correctly (and i could confirm this if i dug up the paperwork from four years ago), that i was able to surrender my parental rights - but SPECIFICALLY to jonathan’s parents, during that 6 months before the adoption was finalized. if anything happened within that span of time (the birthfather doing something screwy and trying to obtain custody was the main issue) custody would revert to me.
there are so many peculiarities of adoption law, state by state. one of the biggest issues for our situation was that jonathan was born in missouri, and his parents lived about 45 minutes away from us, across the state line in kansas. the law required that the signed, official adoption papers be couriered by hand from the missouri state capital to the kansas state capital before his parents could legally take him across state lines. since our court date happened to be on a friday, none of this ended up being completed until the following monday … so his parents were stuck with a days-old newborn away from home over the weekend.
That was all very interesting. I have been a foster parent several times (in Connecticut and New York) It’s a very different procedure.
I wish you the best of luck
Cas
In California if the agency does not place the baby with the originally intended adoptive parents (the ones the bparents chose) the agency has I believe three business days to notify the bparents. The bparents even though they have surrendered their parental rights then have a certain number of days to respond about whether they want the baby back, want to choose a new family or want the agency to choose a new family. If the bparents do not respond the agency chooses a new family…. but like you said this rarely happens that the baby does not stay with the adoptive family chosen by the bapernts.
We were able to take Mallory home before her birthparents terminated their rights. She was just over 12 hours old. This was on Thursday, her birthparents went to court and TPR’ed on Tuesday. Our agency said we could choose to have Mallory go to fostercare, but many birthparents were offended by this. They also said that both the potential adoptive parents and birthparents worried about the baby so much that unless someone requested it , the baby goes home with the adoptive family. I wasn’t concerned they would change their mind, her birthmom promised me that she wouldn’t let me take the baby home if she had any doubts. In retrospect I wish they had taken more time with Mallory in the hospital, they stayed awake all night and roomed with her. They really insisted this was the way they wanted it. During the 6 months before the adoption was finalized, if we were unfit Mallory would have been in the custody of the agency, her birthparents would have had no rights to her.
Not having to go before a judge would be a nice option for birthparents to have, I think. Alena’s birthfather in particular was having a hard time appearing in court. It would have been easier and allowed him to have a little more of his dignity - if that makes sense - for him to terminate his rights in private and not in front of the judge.
The laws have changed in CO. Now the birthparents can terminate their parental rights at any time after the baby’s birth. In practice, it’s whenever the court has room on the calendar. In our case, it was 6 weeks. Once the court date happens, it’s final and irrevocable. If we had been found unfit to parent, the agency would have had custody of Alena and she would go back to foster care until they could find new adoptive parents. I don’t think that the birthparents would have any say in selecting the new family.
in missouri, the birthfather does not have to appear in court - just the birthmother. in my case, the birthfather was able to sign the paperwork in his own home, two hours away. i had to make a bumpy, miserable, 45 minute ride to the county courthouse on a fresh episiotomy to surrender my rights in public. gotta say i think that was pretty unfair.
In Virginia the laws are different for private vs agency adoption. If it’s private the birth mother has to appear in court when the baby at least 10 days old. If it’s an agency adoption she can sign her parental rights over to the agency who will then appear in court. The birth father can sign at any time after the baby’s birth in front of a notary public. With our adoptions we gave the birthmoms the option of going with an agency to avoid the court hearing, but both of them declined. In fact, I think for Jane’s adoption having the formality of a consent hearing was very important.
Once the consent is signed, the birth mother (or father) has 15 days to revolk consent. No matter what kind of adoption it is, once that revocation period is over, a 6-month probationary period begins. During that time a social worker visits the family 3 times and writes a report for the court. Only after the end of those 6 months can the adoption be finalized.
Hi Dawn,
last June when I had Jordan I signed my parental rights 48 hours after he was born and the day i was released. his father signed them the day he was released. I could have waited until than as well since he spent a couple of extra days in the hospital in the NICU.
His adoptive parents took him home from the hospital and my counslor from the agency was there since they became his gaurdian. They had to wait five days before they could take him back to Atlanta. His adoption was final on November 17. I believe we have the normal six months to change our mnd period as well. Neither of us had to be in court at all.
I’ll have to ask my counslor about being involved with the next placement if that had every happened. I did the semi open adoption, so I meet his parents and everything before he was born.
Ally