AboutColleen Expertise I can answer questions about the adoption process. I don't handle questions about searches for adoptive parents.
Experience I have three adopted children. The two youngest were adopted as infants. In both cases, we dealt with the birthmother during her pregnancy and a bit afterwards. Our children are now old enough to begin asking questions and we are dealing with those issues.
Expert: Colleen Date: 5/2/2007 Subject: getting custody of my nephew
Question I have several questions, but i'll try to make this short. :) my husband's sister had a little baby boy 3 weeks ago. she has had 2 children previously, and put them both up for adoption within a couple of weeks of their birth. with this one, she was on drugs and had a serious drinking problem for the first month she was pregnant. (she says she quit everything as soon as she found out she was pregnant).
to make a long story short, she seems to have purposely set herself up to lose this child by cussing out her social worker & cps agent, breaking all the rules set for her by cps (based on her history) and taking her baby with her to parties where people were cutting themselves and each other.
The state took custody of her baby, and her mother called us to be at the custody hearing because we (my husband and i) desperately want this child. because we live in north carolina and the baby is in tennessee, we were denied temporary custody and it was given to the baby's grandmother until may 27th when there will be a 2nd hearing. the judge advised before she can grant us custody, there will have to be a home study.
i've been trying to look up the process online, but all I can find is info on adoption. we plan to eventually adopt, but right now finances don't allow it. this isn't something we'd planned. i just want to know what to expect, and what the laws are. the mother is voluntarily giving us custody and wants to sign away all parental rights to us. the grandmother also wants us to take him because she doesn't want to raise another child at her age. any info you can give me on this process would be awesome. also, will the case worker show up unannounced? what will be expected when they do show up? the CPS agent told us that if we don't get custody, but the grandmother does, grandma can basically pass the baby to us and after having him for 6 months, we can transfer custody from her to us. do you know if that's true? thanks so much for all your help. :) - heather
Answer Hi Heather: I am not at all familiar with custody matters. However, I strongly suggest that if you do decide to take this baby that you do a legal adoption right away. This would prevent the mother from coming back sometime in the future to claim the child. Contacting an attorney would be a good idea.
As far as a home study goes, my experience (3 times) has been the caseworkers are very helpful and do not come unannounced. They will be looking for a stable relationship between yourself and your husband and a relatively clean, happy environment for a child. I've never felt intimidated by any caseworker, even though I was pretty nervous at the time.
You can probably find an agency to help you under "Adoption" in the phone book.
