I believe all states have different readoption requirements, but I will tell you the process we have gone through so far:
1. The baby will receive a Certificate of Citizenship shortly after arriving home. For Taiwan adoptions through JOH Program 3, this COC will be issued in the baby's BIRTH NAME.
2. Depending on your local Social Security Office you may or may not be able to get a SS# in the baby's ADOPTED NAME when the COC is listed in the BIRTH NAME. I have heard of some families in other states being able to do this but, because we live in a high immigration area, our SS Office would not allow. The strange thing about this is that when I gave the SS worker my info, he said that Matthew is already listed in the database under my name as "Matthew" but he still couldn't issue the number.
3. For readoption, we created a petition and an order indicating our desire to have a state birth certificate issued for Matthew and took them to our District Court. This will help down the road when he needs a BC for school, etc. I have copies of our petition and order if anyone needs them for a guide. We did not use an attorney, so our filing fee was $107.
4. When the judge signs off on the order, you take that document and an application to the Vital Stats Office to get a state recognized birth certificate.
4. Once you have the order for readoption signed and a state BC, you can take them along with the VISA, COC, etc to the SS office to apply for a SS#. It will take about 2 weeks to get the card.
This is all we have completed so far...I'm not sure if we need to have Matthew's COC changed. I'll have to do some research!
Thursday, December 20, 2007
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4 comments:
Good for your Tish! We said we were going to do it on our own, but then after putting it off for many weeks, we realized we'd never do it, so we bit the bullet and hired a lawyer. Besides, the process was a bit confusing here in NJ for me. Oh well. I am so proud of you that you did everything yourself! Go you!
jen
Good info to NM. In TN you have to use an adoption attorney for "Recognition of foreign adoptions." We were able to get Reed's SSN in his American name even though his COC has his Chinese name. The attorney we used was fairly inexpensive, but not the $107 you had to pay! That's awesome!
What a blast you must be having with all this fun paperwork Tish!!!
:)
Rebecca
Thanks for writing that up. I'm sure I'll be using it as a guide soon enough.
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