Saturday, March 20, 2010

Adoption Update

Our monthly home visit was last Friday. I realize that I never filled you in on what happened at our February visit, so this will update you on both months.

Our March 25th TPR date was thrown out. We think that this is due to the fact that our case was lumped together with another one against the same birth mother. The other child in the case has a known father and it appears that the father may have asked for time to work on getting his child back. There is no connection between Reese and this man, so this does not affect us other than slowing down our time line. (We don't know for sure that this is what changed the date, but with the info we have this is our best guess.)

Our adoption worker is/was pregnant and left on maternity leave this month (I am not sure if she has had the baby yet). Due to where we are in the process, we got a new case worker rather than a substitute. This was our first month with our new worker. In February, both ladies worked with us to make a smooth transition. Our new case worker was leaving us to go and sign adoption agreements with another family and said that she hoped to be doing that with us soon! After TPR that will be our next step. That means that foster care is out of the case and we are officially waiting for a finalization date.

The new TPR date is tentatively set for June 8th. Please pray for that date. Pray that we would go to court on that date and that the birth mother would choose to relinquish that date. If she chooses to relinquish (rather than the judge order her to be terminated) we can finalize almost immediately as this will cut out most of the paperwork we will have to wait for otherwise. We have no doubt that the judge will terminate her rights, but there is an appeal period we have to wait through among other things. There would be a minimum of 90 days after termination that we would have to wait. Realistically, it would probably be at least 120+ days.

She could relinquish at any time and does not have to wait until June. Please pray that she would realize what is best for her child and that the most loving thing is to make this easier so that we can all move on with our lives. We know that God is in control and that His hand is in all of this. We also know that he honors the prayers of his children, so please join us in praying!

1 comment:

SM Edens said...

Remind me to tell you the sweetest story of when my sister adopted their daughter -- and how the mother voluntarily gave Jessica up to them. The story is too long to leave on your blog :)