Adoption Questions

Congratulations on your connection. Be sure to keep track of your legal & agency expenses as you'll need these to submit for military reimbursement. Further, keep track of any medical, travel, other expenses for your IRS filing. Niether can be filed until after the adoption is final. For IRS, it's in the tax year the adoption was finalized. So if you don't finalize until 2006, you can file NLT April 15 2007. Tax year 2006 doesn't end until Dec 31, 2006. Military just requires that it be finalized. Also, when you go to add your child to DEERs, be sure to specify this is a PRE ADOPTIVE WARD, rather than a regular ward. Not every DEERS office will understand how to do this. You can pull the directive off Google, take it with you just in case. Pre Adoptive Wards are eligible immediately for complete benefits including medical. Once your adoption is finalized, you'll need to take the final order into DEERS again and have them convert your child's status. As far as getting time off: Right now, the best thing to do is to communicate with your command. There is a bill in Congress that would give specific time off. See "Nancy's Blog" on this site for more info on it. With us, we saved leave time, DH's command was very flexible with us, etc. Since we weren't sure when we'd be leaving for our son's birth in another state, he ran a leave chit in advance with open dates. TDY Deferment - not something I'm familiar with, sorry. DH went on DET (USN) when Ryan was 8 weeks old. I think since there's no medical condition for you to recover from (Birth) than it would be Command discretion. HTH. Best of luck & congratulations on your connection. Regina