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Okay, let me give a quick background. January 3rd, was supposed to be a compliance review, mom & dad decided to voluntarily surrender rights, however it was late in the day and their was no notary at the courthouse by the time the decision was made, so they were asked to come to DFS office and sign the following week. They did. Next court hearing was February, where the court was supposed to accept the voluntary relinquishment. Mom and Dad had moved and couldn't be served notice of the hearing, so the Judge said he couldn't rule on the voluntary surrender and set the next court date for today April 18th at 2:00. It was stated that they would either try to find them or advertise in the paper. To the best of my knowlege they know where they currently are, so should have been able to serve if they attempted.
Today comes along and I'm anxious for court, and I talk a department aid who mentions there is nothing on the calendar for court today, so she connects me with FD's worker. She says that today is just an "order of reference" and that none of us need to be there. Now she says that the surrender is done, it was done back in January when they signed, makes sense to me except why did the judge say he couldn't rule in February and set another court date for today. So what is an "Order of Reference"? And should I show up today anyhow, court is in 2 hours. TIA!
No clue what an order of reference is. Can you google it and the name of your state? It might be related to how they need to be served and the judge approving the method of service. It doesn't sound like you need to be there for whatever is going to happen either way today. But I can promise that if you skip it, you will miss something. That's how these things seem to go.
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I missed it, I decided to run on to town and pick up a few things I needed before we leave on our camping trip and ended up stuck in the grocery store line for 30 minutes.
I did google it, and it appears that the Order of Reference is where the court agrees with the the agency plan for us to proceed with the adoption and orders a homestudy done. That kind of fits into what our CW was saying, but who knows, like Jen said, I already regret not making it just so I'd know if there were any suprises. CW says the adoption should be completed by the end of summer, so I'm just going to hold onto that thought and assume everything is moving in the right direction unless I hear otherwise. This county does things much differently than the county we used to live in where I adopted 5 children while living there.
She said another odd thing to me on the phone today too. When she was explaining the process of where we are and where we are headed, she mentioned when she gets the signed Order of Reference, she'll come out to update our homestudy to send to the court, and that we would sign the intent to adopt and the subsidy agreement and that she would get the same subsidy we have already negotiated with the VEMAT (even though last time we spoke about subsidy she said we wouldn't be getting any), so I said "And the Medicaid?", and she said she didn't think we'd get that. I reminded her that she is still having follow up visits for the liver failure and that market insurance would be next to impossible to obtain (that was the main thing I wanted), and she still said she didn't think we'd get that. I've never heard of getting a cash subsidy without Medicaid, is that heard of anywhere?
Then when she said things should be finalized by the end of summer I asked, "So when should we be looking for a lawyer to hire?" (we are too far from our old home to use the one we used previously. And she said, "Oh, you don't have to hire a lawyer, we pay Bob (DFS attorney) extra and he does all that for you". My mind is spinning at this point, I didn't say anything out loud, but was thinking, you mean they actually let him represent both sides of the matter? Anyone heard of that? Should we go along for the ride or insist that we want our own lawyer to look everything over? They really do things differently here, I thought I was an old hand at this, but apparently not.
You need your own lawyer. I would absolutely see you "sharing" a lawyer with DFS as a conflict of interest and even if allowed you want someone who you can speak with confidentially and trust that person has your interests - and yours alone - at heart.
We didn't have a lawyer when we did our adoption in 2009. DCFS handled everything. All we had to do was attend the subsidy agreement meeting, sign the final agreement, and then show up at court for the adoption.
Jess
Barb, we aren't using our own lawyer. DFS pays for everything. We went to the VEMAT, we sign our intent to adopt on Thursday, then we wait for it to come back from Richmond and then for the judge to sign off on everything.
End of summer however seems a bit overly optimistic! It took our girl's bother's paper work (name change, SS#, etc.) a month and a half to come back from Richmond. Thenn it is supposed to take them another month or more to get everything signed by the judge.
We are hoping to finalize by July... but I am not holding my breath!
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MrsCCQ
Barb, we aren't using our own lawyer. DFS pays for everything.
It took our girl's bother's paper work (name change, SS#, etc.) a month and a half to come back from Richmond. Thenn it is supposed to take them another month or more to get everything signed by the judge.
We are hoping to finalize by July... but I am not holding my breath!
This is all so foreign to me, DFS always paid for our lawyer before, but we went out and hired our own attorney, and they had a max amount that they would reimburse (or sometimes the lawyer was willing to wait for the county to pay get his share).
And then on your girl's brother's paperwork, are you saying they applied for the SSN at the time of or before the adoption? With all 5 of my kids I had to go down to the Social Security office AFTER the adoption was final with the adoption decree and birth certificates in hand to have SSN's issued. And all of our name changes were just part of the final order of adoption, nothing went to Richmond first. I'm just wondering if things have changed that much statewide in the last 8 years since my last adoption or if it is just a difference from county to county within the state.
MrsCCQ
Barb, we aren't using our own lawyer. DFS pays for everything.
It took our girl's bother's paper work (name change, SS#, etc.) a month and a half to come back from Richmond. Thenn it is supposed to take them another month or more to get everything signed by the judge.
We are hoping to finalize by July... but I am not holding my breath!
This is all so foreign to me, DFS always paid for our lawyer before, but we went out and hired our own attorney, and they had a max amount that they would reimburse (or sometimes the lawyer was willing to wait for the county to pay get his share).
And then on your girl's brother's paperwork, are you saying they applied for the SSN at the time of or before the adoption? With all 5 of my kids I had to go down to the Social Security office AFTER the adoption was final with the adoption decree and birth certificates in hand to have SSN's issued. And all of our names changes were just part of the final order of adoption, nothing was sent to Richmond in advance. I'm just wondering if things have changed that much statewide in the last 8 years since my last adoption or if it is just a difference from county to county within the state.