pebbles927

My USC husband will eventually be wanting to adopt my younger son, (from Ontario) so that he is his own and has his last name etc.
I was just wondering if anyone could point me to any sites where I could get some information about this subject.

Thanks very much.!

Mrtravel

pebbles927 wrote:
    >
    > My USC husband will eventually be wanting to adopt my younger son, (from Ontario)
    > so that he is his own and has his last name etc. I was just wondering if anyone
    > could point me to any sites where I could get some information about this subject.

It would depend on the state. Going to your local court web pages might help. A
google search should help. Of course, it would matter on what the child's other legal
parent had to say about it.

My daughter, now almost 8, hasn't been seen by her father since she was a baby. Odd,
yes... Her bio father was married to her mother at the time, so it isn't like it was
a one night stand. Before leaving Russia, my wife tracked him down and got him to
sign 2 notarized statements. One gave my wife permission to take the child out of the
country, the other gave permission for the child to be adopted and take my last name.
Note: This Russian person who notarized this statement had written it in language
suitable to meet the legal requirements in California.

The filing fees were fairly cheap. I think $20. I think the fee for the social
services investigation was $200 or so. I also had to pay a $15 fee when I got
fingerprinted for an FBI check.

The steps here:

1. Went to website to find out what forms were needed.
2. Check out library book "How To Adopt Your Stepchild In California"
3. Found out forms created by CD in the book are the old style legal forms. The new
forms are in the book, but not on the CD. They are pretty much predone forms that
have check boxes and lines for name, address, etc.
4. Paid website I found online for fillable forms of the ones I needed.
5. Filed first form, paid filing fee
6. Contacted Social Services to indicate I had filed and gave them a copy (court
stamped) of the form. They gave me some forms
7. Turned forms into the SS people with absent parent's consent.
8. SS schedules a home visit, then comes and asks questions of me, my wife, and
daughter. The daughter was also questioned by herself. (She is
9)
10. SS calls 2 or 3 weeks later to say the report is done and they have submitted it
to the court.
11. Check with court to verify they have the SS report, then make an appointment to
meet with the judge in chambers. They only do 1 per day here right before probate
court starts.

12. Judge asks a couple of questions, and asks Sasha if this is ok with her. Then he
signs the papers and the go right to the office to be recorded. A few minutes
later, we are leaving the courthouse with serveral stamped copies. We are told
the state will issue a birth certificate which we can obtain from the state in a
few weeks.

13. Go to local city clerk's office and apply for passport since the Child
Citizenship Act of 2000 makes Sasha a citizen now. (Actually, the INS rules seem
to say if living with the adopted parent for 2 years, but we didn't file the INS
form, just for a passport. The Passport requirements on the State.gov site don't
mention this. In any case, she has now been here two years, so the INS listed
requirement is satisfied.

She has a new middle name and new last name. However, in the course of the past year
she had alreay started using the last name without us telling her to do it. One day
she just started bringing home schoolwork with the name on it. At that point I
decided I had procrastinated too long. The middle name was changed because in Russia,
it is a form of the father's name. She liked "Marie" better.

pebbles927

MrTravel,

Thank you for your reply, I will check out the local court pages and see what they say. And do some more elaborate searches, I had done some but wasn't turning up much.

Thanks again
Susan