Adopting Family Rights

The links and information below can help you understand the rights of each party that is involved in the child adoption process.

Once a child has been placed with you, you have lots of responsibilities and few rights as they relate to the adoption. You have the great responsibility and joy to love and care for the child and make sure all of the child's needs are addressed.  However, unless and until the biological or legal parental rights have been ended, the child is still theirs, and you have no parental "rights".  Even after the ending of the biological parental rights, until the adoption has been finalized you are not the parent of the child and can make custodial decisions but not parental decisions.

Of course you do have the "right" to select an adoption agency or adoption attorney of your choice, you have the "right" to not be lied to or mislead, and you have the right to return the child prior to the adoption.  But you have few rights as relates to the child.

It is difficult to relate exactly what your "rights" are or will be because several variables come into play in order to determine your rights and responsibilities as the adopting family. For example, your rights can be affected by the type of adoption since whether you are engaging in an international child adoption or a domestic child adoption and whether the adoption is a foster care adoption, an intrastate or interstate child adoption, or an adoption done with an adoption facilitator all impact on "rights' and responsibilities.

To learn more about rights please visit the links Birth Mother Rights and Birth Father Rights. 

Remember that when it comes to laws and legal rights, there is no substitute of an experienced attorney and we have provided the following link for adoption attorneys.

The State Adoption Laws link on the Adoption Services website and another website, ChildAdoptionLaws.com, will allow you to check out your rights under the laws of your state of residence and under the laws of the state in which the rights of the birth mother and birth father are ended.

Adoption Services has extensive experience with both the voluntary and involuntary termination of parental rights.  We are able to help you with an international adoption or a domestic adoption regardless of the state in which you reside. For help finding a different child adoption agency please visit the links Adoption Agencies: Domestic and Adoption Agencies: International.  You may also want to contact Dr Berger and ask about his help as an Adoption Consultant.