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The international adoption process is a complex one. I will start with a chronological list of my personal experiences and the aprroximate timelines. Please let me know if I overlook something.From start to finish, the process can range from a few months to a few years or more. A lot of it depends on your decisions, your agency, your child preferences. Some things are completely out of your control like: foreign holdups, both before and during your trips, and certain paperwork stages (i.e., certain INS paperwork must be processed and approved before other steps take place) The average adoption takes about 2 years; that is also about how long ours took, depending on when you designate as the start and stop dates.
- Consideration of international adoption (years)
- First informational meeting with an agency
- Decision to proceed
- Agency search - about 25 major prospects (3 months)
- Sign contract and pay deposit
- Home Study process - (3-5 months to collect all paperwork)
- Adoption Dossier paperwork (3-5 months, concurrent w/home study)
- INS paperwork (concurrent w/home study)
- Dossier translation (1 month)
- Petition to foreign government (2-3 months)
- Wait for referal from orphanage(s) - this really depends on how youth and healthy you are willing to consider (2 months - ? years)
- Foreign Visa (permission/invitation to travel to country) (3-10 days)
- Travel to orphanage for first visit (some places may not require first visit - 10 days)
- Local court paperwork process (1-2 months)
- Travel for second visit (10 days)
- Court date - local region (1 day)
- Take custody of child
- Regional passport and travel paperwork processing (3-5 days)
- Embassy meetings and paperwork - in Moscow or Warsaw (2-4 days)
- Return to US with child
- Post-adoption paperwork - brith cert., SS#, US passport, etc. (?)
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