Private Adoption in the Philippines

To anyone considering starting the adoption process, it helps to have the Filipino lawyer get a court ordered legal guardianship as soon as possible to help satisfy the 2 year requirement for the State department rules. The good news is that the time from filing the adoption petition in the Philippine courts starts the timing for the 2 years. We filed in Aug 2009 and the adoption was granted Nov 12, 2010 by the court. I then had to get all the right papwer work (another 2 month process after the finalization) to file the I-130 to the INS. The children were approved for an IR-2 visa and it is now being processed thu the visa center and US Embassy. In the case of orphan or abandoned child, this simplifies the process in all cases. The lawyer fee for handing an adoption is about P120,000 ($2500) whether it is one child or two as in our case. We got a $13,000 adoption credit from the IRS, which covered all our expenses and then some. We also had the fortune of having a very helpful DFWD (family services) worker assigned to our case. Good luck.