How is everyone doing?

[Jen]

All we need now is for him to be born, and for the birth-mother to walk out of the hospital without him.


The one catch is that there is a "legal risk" window between birth and finalization of the termination of parental rights.  That takes 3 - 6 weeks.  He will be in foster care for the duration of the legal risk window just in case our birth-mother changes her mind.

If all goes well, we will bring him home no later than August 1st.  The adoption will be finalized 6 months after his birth-date.

Wow, what a stressful situation. Lots of mixed emotions involved I'm sure. Dave and I have talked and if we end up adopting, I think we want to adopt a toddler. I wonder if the same legal risk window is present if the child isn't a new born. I hope everything turns out for the best. Good luck IC.

[The IC]

the legal risk window varies from state to state and situation to situation

We live in WI, which means that the birth-mother can legally re-acquire custody her child after she has signed the termination of parental rights (TPR), if she does this before a judge signs the TPR.  That process takes about a month.  In IL, for example, the mother loses custody of a child the moment she signs her TPR.


We found out over the weekend that the birth-father has disappeared, which means that our agency has to run his name in the paper for 3 consecutive days for him to come forward.  Our social worker said that the judge may not require them to do that, since he is very aware of the pregnancy, and has discussed it with the agency.