Whether you are beginning the adoption process or have already connected with a birthparent and are in need of legal counsel to help you with the process, choosing an attorney is one of the most important decisions you will make in the process.  Having worked in the adoption field for nine years, I can not stress how important it is to choose an attorney that has adoption experience.  Even though I have worked with an agency, we often assist couples with home studies for independent adoptions and the nightmare adoptions we see are often associated with an attorney that does not know anything about adoption law.

I always recommend choosing an attorney that is a member of the American Academy of Adoption Attorneys (also known as AAAA or Quad A Attorneys).  Adoption law is tricky and, aside from a handful of Federal laws, it is state specific.  It gets even trickier if the adoptive family lives in one state and the birthparents live in another and you are dealing with the laws in both states as well as the Interstate Compact on the Placement of Children that regulates children being placed across state lines.  If you are dealing with an attorney that does not know all of these state specific laws, then something can be done incorrectly in your adoption that could cause a disruption in the future.

When teaching seminars on adoption law, I always use the example of an adoption gone wrong in a neighboring county where both the judge and the lawyer did not do things correctly.  First of all, the lawyer had the adoption finalized in Juvenile Court which, in my state at least, can not happen as adoptions are finalized in Chancery or Fourth Circuit Court.  Secondly, the adoption was finalized and the Birthmother never signed a Surrender to surrender her parental rights, so her parental rights were still in place and an adoption can not be finalized when one or both of the birthparents still have parental rights to the child.  So, when the Birthmother went to court five years later, of course she won since her parental rights were never terminated.

I don’t share this story to scare prospective adoptive parents.  I share it to educate them and to let them know how important it is to use someone who just practices adoption law or one who has done adoption in their practice for at least five years.  This does not include a lawyer who has done an adoption twice in five years, but one who does them on a regular basis.  This does not include a friend who is a lawyer whose heart might be in the right place but that might end up hurting the adoption in the end.

If you can not find a AAAA Attorney in your area, contact the nearest one to you.  Often they will know someone in your area that they can recommend.  For instance, the AAAA Attorney that most adoptive parents and agencies use in my area has attorneys that she contacts for adoptions in counties and towns that are within about a two hour radius of her.  She also has a list of attorneys that she would NOT recommend, which is equally as helpful.

So, before you choose an attorney, check with the AAAA listing to see if there is an attorney in your area.  Check credentials.  Contact families that have used that attorney.  Talk with other adoptive families to see who they used and what their experience was.  I have literally seen an attorney make or break an adoption because of the way they handled or mishandled things.  Don’t take the chance when it comes to your family.  Choose an attorney that will take everyone’s interests into account and one that will follow adoption law to the letter to ensure that things are done the way they are supposed to and everyone is safe and secure.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 4th, 2006 at 5:14 am and is filed under Adoption. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.