Adoption
Here to help you navigate the adoption process
Every child deserves a loving, stable home. Growing or unifying your family through adoption can be incredibly meaningful, both for your family and for the child you are adopting. Our team of experienced Washington adoption attorneys can help you navigate the adoption process. We will stand by you, helping you understand your options and the legal system while providing you with the education you need to make the best informed decisions for your family.
KNOWING YOUR OPTIONS
Adopting a Child
Whether you are considering adoption or have already made up your mind, it is essential to understand the various options for adopting a child in Washington. Our qualified adoption attorneys can help you throughout your journey, whether you are fostering to adopt, doing a private placement adoption, or leveraging an agency.
Second Parent Adoption
Second parent adoption is a process that allows one partner to adopt their partner’s child without terminating either biological parent’s rights. Both people in a same-sex relationship are presumed to be the legal parents of a child born during that relationship in Washington State.
However, many same-sex couples choose to go through second-parent adoption to become the legal parents and ensure they are recognized as the legal parent when traveling. Schedule a consult with one of our adoption attorneys to understand your options.
Step-Parent Adoption
If you are a stepparent, you have likely created a deep bond with your partner’s child. That bond will play an important role in that child’s life, but if anything were to happen to your partner, you might not have a say in that child’s future. In Washington, children can only have two legal parents.
To adopt your partner’s child from another relationship, the birth parent must give up their parental rights or have those rights terminated, and the court must determine if the adoption is in the best interests of the child. Contact our office for a consultation. Our adoption team can work with you to answer any questions you may have.
Open Adoption
Washington allows birth parents to maintain a relationship with their children in an open adoption setting. This enforceable contract specifies the type of contact biological parents and possibly biological siblings may have after the adoption is finalized. Our attorneys can discuss the level of contact and what is right for you and your family.
Closed Adoption
There is generally no communication in a closed adoption between the adoptee, birth parents, and adoptive family. An experienced Washington-based attorney with our firm can help you petition the court for this kind of adoption and prepare you for questions about the child’s background.
Adult Adoption
Any adult can adopt any other adult if they agree. This can be a joyous gift to formally recognize the role of an adult who has played a significant role in your life. The adult adoption process is celebratory, quick, and can be very meaningful to a relationship that has often already existed for many years.
There can also be important estate planning reasons to consider an adult adoption. You should speak with an Estate Planning attorney before moving forward with an adult adoption. One of our experienced family law attorneys can guide the adoption process, and our estate planning team can help ensure your wishes are recorded.
FROM PETITION TO FINAL HEARING
The Legal Process for Adoption
- Your name, address, and birthdate
- The adoptee’s name, address, and place, and date of birth
- The name and address of the social services department or person with custody of the child
- Written consent to adoption by all parties
- Your relationship to the child
- The legal reason for terminating the biological parents’ rights
- Notice that you are the best caregiver for the child and that adoption is in the child’s best interests
- A signature from you and your spouse
HELPING YOU DEVELOP A PLAN
Speak With a Washington Adoption Attorney
Whether you need assistance finding the child’s biological parents, obtaining their consent, or filing the appropriate paperwork, our firm can help. We can even help gather critical medical records from biological parents and other legal documents, including the petition, financial information, employment verification, and proof of residency.
Let our team help you understand your legal options and make the best decisions for your case. We can develop a plan tailored to your family’s needs. Begin the process by contacting our firm and consulting with one of our adoption lawyers today.
STAY UP TO DATE
Subscribe to our newsletters
FURTHER READING
Blog Posts
Family law and estate planning often intersect. This is particularly true when contemplating divorce, remarriage, or blending families.
At some point during your divorce case, friends and family members whose own marriages ended in divorce probably told you that it gets better, and it does. Of course, from your perspective, getting out of a bad marriage might be…
Co-parenting over a long distance when you are a non-residential parent does not have to equate to sacrificing involvement in your children’s lives. But it likely does mean you will have to make tweaks in your communication and parenting style to accommodate the new living arrangement.
When parents go through a divorce, child custody can be one of the hardest issues to deal with. But increasingly in American households, pets are part of the family, and separating can create similar concerns over who gets the family pet.
In today’s world of fast-paced decision-making and on-demand solutions, such as DIY divorces, it is not surprising that many couples contemplate divorce the moment they find themselves unhappily married. Our culture’s fickle mentality often seems to advocate for the idea…
In the wake of divorce or separation, co-parenting can feel stressful. Not only have you just gone through an emotional experience, but you are also now trying to figure out how both you and your co-parent can spend time with…
Far too many families end up fighting, or at least experiencing tension, over a family inheritance, but it does not have to be that way. Having counseled families for years, we offer the following advice to help your family avoid fighting over your property — while you are here and after you die.
Establishing paternity and parentage is important for many families and parents. Regardless of why you want to establish paternity and parentage, the process has the potential to be confusing, especially if you are unfamiliar with the terms and rules for…
As a mom of four (now adult) kids, I remember well the flood of emotions that came each time they went to my ex’s, especially during the early days of my separation and eventually after my divorce. Not only was…
In Washington state, if you are involved in a custody dispute, which involves difficult questions related to specific needs for your children or serious parenting deficits (such as mental health, substance abuse, or domestic violence), an evaluation service may be…
Divorce can be an emotionally grueling process, especially when you have children. In addition to coming to terms with how your own day-to-day is going to evolve, your children, too, will have to get used to seeing their lives change,…
For parents, divorce often raises many questions surrounding extracurricular activities. These questions usually include whether the children will get to participate in the extracurricular activities (sports, performing arts classes, music lessons, art classes, etc.) they did before the divorce, expanded…
Becoming a single parent, especially after being married and having a partner to share in the physical and emotional labor, can be a challenging transition. The role of single parent, even for those in a healthy co-parenting relationship with their…
The expression “in sickness and in health” is common in wedding ceremonies of all faiths. So when most people recite these words, it is probably safe to assume that they envision themselves married at a time when the unthinkable may…
Until 1987, Washington, like most states, awarded “custody” of the children to one of the parents at the conclusion of a divorce or separation case. This changed with the passage of the Parenting Act. Today, instead of ordering child custody,…