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1. Send your profile, adoption application form and application fee
with the following:
a. Dear Birth Mother letter: Write a letter telling potential birth
mothers as much as you can about yourselves. Include your hobbies
and interests, your occupations, your personalities, your experience
and loss at not having children (or more children), your pets, your
favorite vacations, your extended family, your dreams, and a description
of your home.
b. Pictures: Include at least ten to twenty pictures of yourselves,
fun times, vacations, pets, your home, relatives, etc. Place your
pictures on 8½ by 12 paper and write or type in captions explaining
each photo. Then put them in a notebook with your birth mother letter.
You will not get your profile back, so you may wish to send us copies,
which can be made at Kinkos or another copying place. Be as creative
as you wish when putting your profile together. Please send us two
copies.
c. Home Study: If you have a home study please send us a copy with
an original signature. Your home study is good for one year. If
you need to have one done, make arrangements as soon as possible,
but go ahead and send everything else so we can start the application
process.
d. Enclosed you will find a Memorandum of documents needed to complete
your application. Our office must have all of these documents in
order to complete your adoption with our agency.
e. $550.00 nonrefundable application fee. This fee is good for one
year.
2. Your pictures and letter are shown to birth
mothers once they have signed a statement of intention to place
their child for adoption with our agency. Usually three or four
couples are presented to each birth mother.
3. Once a birth mother chooses you, you sign a contract and then send the total estimated amount of
your adoption fees, expenses, and costs, which will be deposited into the agency escrow account. If your
birth mother lives in the State of Oklahoma, you will come to our offices in Oklahoma for your interview with
the Child Placement Supervisor, and to meet your birth mother.
4. Keep in touch with us and with your birth mother throughout the
pregnancy.
5. If you are adoptive parents from Oklahoma and you are matched with an out of state birth mother, you will be required to go to an interview with the
respective out of state agency before meeting your birth mother in
her state of residence. Either an agency representative or
the attorney representing the agency in the birth mother's state
will meet with you and explain the laws of the jurisdiction as
well as meet with you and the birth mother jointly.
6. Come to the city the child is to be born, close
to the date of delivery. Sometimes you will be allowed to be present
at the delivery. This is the birth mother's option. Usually
you can be with the baby while it is in the hospital.
7. If your baby is born in Oklahoma, we will have the mother sign a
voluntary statement of intention to place the child for adoption
in front of a notary. This will allow the hospital to release the
child to the agency representative. Upon release, you take the baby
with you to the hotel and wait. When the birth mother appears in
court and relinquishes her parental rights, a temporary order of
custody will be granted to the agency. Thereafter, the agency will
issue the adoptive parents a physical custody agreement allowing
the adoptive parents to have physical custody of the child and give
medical care to the child until the final decree. This should be
faxed to your insurance company so they baby will have medical coverage.
If your baby is delivered outside of Oklahoma, other states have
similar documents that you will need that will allow you to provide
the child with medical care while you are waiting for a final decree.
8. In Oklahoma, the birth mother or birth parents relinquish their
parental right to the agency before a judge within approximately
a week or two after hospital release. The relinquishment cannot
be revoked.
9. If you are from out of state, you must stay in the State in
which your child is born until approval
is received from the Interstate Compact on the Placement of Children.
Our office will send the packet to the respective Compact office
and assist in obtaining
approval. The fee that is charged by the Interstate
Compact office varies by state but in Oklahoma is $250.00. This
fee is paid at the time the packet is fully completed and given
to the compact officer.
10. We then overnight the packet via FedEx to your home state and
the Compact office of your home state
will review it. They have thirty days to approve it, but generally
approval is received within seven to ten days.
11. Return home and have three post placement home studies completed.
12. Set up the Final Decree hearing in your home state or the state
where your child was born.
Congratulations! You now have a new member in your family!
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