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National Adoption Month Mother and Child

November begins the season of holidays, and National Adoption Day is one of our favorites!

This year, National Adoption Day falls on November 20, in the middle of National Adoption Month. This day celebrates the kids who are newly adopted, and gives pause to remember the kids in foster care, still waiting to be adopted. As your expert family lawyer in Minnesota and Wisconsin, this holiday is near and dear to our hearts.

Here are some facts about National Adoption Day and the adoption process overall.

How Did National Adoption Day Start?

According to its official website, National Adoption Day goes back more than 20 years. In 2000, the Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute, along with the Freddie Mac Foundation, asked nine cities to open up their courtrooms the Saturday before Thanksgiving to finalize adoption proceedings — and of course, to celebrate them.

This idea was inspired by the actions of Judge Michael Nash. While acting as presiding judge of Los Angeles County Juvenile Court, Nash opened up his courtroom Saturdays with the help of his court personnel and finalized adoptions, to help alleviate the backlog of the country’s busiest court.

In addition to the Congressional Coalition, National Adoption Day was founded with the help of the Alliance for Children’s Rights, the Children’s Action Network and the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption.

Those are all some long names, but that last one may sound familiar. Dave Thomas is most famous as the founder of Wendy’s — Yes, the restaurant chain. Having himself been adopted, Thomas championed for adoptions and testified to Congress on behalf of tax credits to make adoption more affordable.

Although he was adopted as a baby, Thomas was most passionate about adoptions out of foster care. His foundation describes itself as the only public nonprofit charity in the U.S. that focuses on foster care adoptions exclusively.

What does the process of adopting look like?

There are numerous options when adopting a child, and that helps determine the process. You may also be going through the adoption process as a biological parent — we represent biological parents like you, too.

For example, you can adopt locally, across states, or even internationally. You can adopt through private placement or an agency. This brings the options of having an open adoption — meaning your child knows their birth parents while you raise them — or a closed adoption, so you don’t know the birth parents and vice versa.

Or maybe you’re adopting a child who is related to you or is your stepchild. You can also choose to adopt after a surrogate carries the child through pregnancy.

As your family law experts, we don’t discriminate in who we represent. We’re happy to help you grow your family whether you’re a single person, heterosexual or same-sex couple, or even an unmarried couple ready to grow your family.

As we said, we also represent biological parents and relatives. We’re here to ensure that people can grow their families while making sure children are adopted into loving families.

What snags could we hit during the adoption process?

Whether you’re growing your own family or making sure your biological child grows up in a loving family, you don’t want to go through the adoption process alone.

We may need to navigate laws such as the Indian Child Welfare Act, the Hague Convention, or the Interstate Compact on the Placement of Children.

We also may need to work through the termination of the biological parent’s rights if that needs to take place and file the appropriate notice with the appropriate agency to make sure the biological father is aware of the pending adoption.

Sound overwhelming? Like we said, we’re here to help.

Who Celebrates Adoption?

We love seeing adoptions finalize because the kids are so joyous, and so are the parents! Your lawyer, the judge, court officials, and everyone in between celebrates National Adoption Day and any day that adoption is finalized. We’re here to represent you on your adoption journey, but we’re also here to celebrate with you once it’s completed.

And we know that for the biological parents, this can be a bittersweet occasion too. We’ll represent your case, and your biological child’s case, with the utmost sensitivity and care.

 

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