When Bill and I started this journey, we had no idea that there were so many decisions to make before we even paid anyone. I used to think that if you wanted to adopt, you just went to an agency. That's only one choice, I discovered, and it's not always the best choice for everyone. Going through the foster care system is another option (often called the "foster care shortcut"). You can also hire an attorney. And then you have to consider whether you will adopt in your home state or in another state that allows non-resident adoptions.
Alaska is a wonderful state, but it is also one of the least populous. The number of adoptions completed in Alaska number less than 650, and a larger proportion of those are adoptions from foster care. Our local adoption agency says on their website that they made fewer than TEN infant placements the year prior. With so few options available to us, we decided that perhaps we should look outside Alaska, as well.
Adoption by Randall Hicks has a state-by-state review of laws so readers can compare their options. The first thing I did was eliminate states that allow only residents to adopt. That cut my list down to half of the states in the US. Then we looked at how long the birth mother has the right to change her mind about adoption (called "revocation of consent"), and how long it takes for the adoption to become final in the courts. Believe it or not, we found a couple of states that gave the birth mother as long as 45 days to change her mind, but during that time the child could live with you. Alaska's laws give the birth mother 10 days to change her mind, and there are many other states that allot the same amount of time. But some states are much shorter, and that's where we hit a bit of a snag.
We had our list down to 13 states at this point. But we wanted to narrow it to just two beside Alaska. Randall Hicks recommended in his book to hire three professionals instead of just one. His reasoning was that with three professionals working toward a match with a birth mother, we could finish the adoption with the party that made the match. He also said that this approach could shave months off the time we wait for a birth mother to choose us. That sounded really good to us!
Deciding on the final two states was really a financial decision. We have quite a few airline miles racked up with Alaska Airlines, but they only fly as far east as Detroit. To help us save money, we removed any states that were farther east. That left us with five states; Michigan and Illinois were the most populous, having thousands of adoptions completed every year. We decided that those two states might be our best option.
So now we're in the process of compiling a list of attorneys and agencies, requesting their written materials and reviewing those materials. Once we're done with those tasks, we'll narrow our lists further with some phone calls and consultations to get a feel for whether we want to work with these professionals. There's still much more work to be done!
