waiting...

Now that the 6 months is up of JJ being home, we can move forward with the finalization. However, NE law is more strict than UT law regarding birth dad making our attorney jump through some more hoops...This makes our finalization not 2/24 as we had hoped, or even 3/24, but now hopefully in April. Sigh. It seems like kids come into our homes quickly...then we wait and wait on finalization. Worst case scenario we get to brave WY again and finalize in Utah (along with more $ pd out) lol! JJ is SOOOOOOO worth it all though:)

For the rest of you who want more details...

Utah law allows for birth mom's to relinquish their rights when baby is 24 hours old. JJ's birth mom did this and all is well with that. Utah has a law that the birth mom can put "undisclosed" for the father even if she knows who the father is (she does - JJ and his sister have the same dad). Utah has a Birth Registry for birth dad's that says if the birth dad wants to attempt to raise the child he must register on that birth registry before baby is 3 weeks old. JJ's birth dad did not. NE law says that a father must be "published" on to go the extra step to make sure that he was given as many opportunities to know about the child (he does) and either not respond (then his parental rights are then terminated) or sign the relinquishment. For some reason at this point our attorney does not believe that the Utah law where JJ was born/placed will not supercede NE law even though in a UT court the mom and dad's parental rights are already terminated/relinquished. So...waiting...

I will be calling an adoption lawyer today to ask some of these questions and be advocating for us...

Worse case scenario we drive to Utah with all of that expense and pay $1500 for finalization instead of $350 for finalization.

With all of that said, this is by far the easiest adoption we have done out of 4. We would go through this process again if we were adopting again (which we are NOT!!!) lol:)

UPDATE:

Our atty spoke to the judge today who offered 3 options-2 of them involving finding the birth father. The reason we used Utah was b/c of their adoption friendly laws and NOT having to find the birth father (in UT the onus is on the birth father-not the courts/adoptive family)...trying not to be too frustrated by this - remembering we had plenty of potholes in the previous 3 adoptions and all worked in the end. We'll get no more news until Monday...

Sunday my husband and I had a talk with the kids about "patience." We decided that we were going to be intentional about using the word "long-suffering" instead while focusing on trusting God for outcomes during trials/just getting through the day. I should have known better lol!!!!! What was I thinking?!?! Hmmm, perhaps going to UT for finalization and stopping through for a vacation in the Grand Tetons "on the way" will happen???