I was able to get all our necessary adoption papers and legal papers together for our re-adoption of Oliver. Unfortunately, we were not able to process our readoption for Chloe because we lived in Texas when we adopted her and our homestudy agency for that adoption was not in NJ. I am sure there is a way to re-adopt Chloe in NJ, but we've got our hands full with trying to complete Oliver's. Oliver's is a priority as he cannot get his U.S. citizenship without our re-adoption. Chloe came in to the U.S. on a different visa and is a citizen already. I will re-investigate our options for Chloe after we re-adopt Oliver.
In any case, our adoption hearing is set for November 19th. We had a surprising twist in our re-adoption, we have to go through the homestudy process again!! Yes, you read that correctly. Our county requires fingerprints, background checks and the homestudy be re-done from the start for the process. I could hardly believe it myself. I thought it had to be a mistake, but after many phone calls to our homestudy agency and the courts, it was confirmed that it had to be completely re-done. Why? Well, I couldn't get a good explanation for that and I still don't get why we have to redo it entirely when we already did a homestudy to adopt from Ethiopia and have done two post-placement reports since bringing Oliver home. I even explained that he WAS LEGALLY our son already. We adopted him according to the laws of Ethiopia and the U.S. and this re-adoption is supposed to be a formality we have to complete in order to get his U.S. citizenship and birth certificate. There is really no need to go through another homestudy process.
The best explanation the court could give me was, "It's what our county requires. Its the law in the county in which you reside." A law that's going to cost us around $730 extra (the fee for the biometrics and the new homestudy) for no apparent reason other than our county is only 1 of 3 in the state of NJ that requires this be done AGAIN. Our homestudy agency gave a not much better answer stating that our county doesn't differentiate between domestic and international adoptions. In other words, they treat every adoption court case like a domestic adoption---assuming it's your first time to court and requiring the homestudy to their special standards & requirements. They don't care if its an international adoption, you've been to court before in another country and you've done the homestudy and post-placement reports already. It's their way or the highway.
Oh, and the best news I learned...our social worker is no longer with our homestudy agency and we have a new one. One that doesn't know us from Adam, one that wants to get to know us and meet several times with us to get this written and turned in to the court before our court date in November. Arghhhh!
I know it will get done and this will all be behind us in another month. I'm trying to look on the bright side and negotiate with our homestudy agency to use this homestudy for our adoption from China (the one we've been waiting for nearly 4 years) as we will have to start the process to re-do our paperwork according to the new regulations.
If anyone out there living in our county in NJ is waiting to adopt from Ethiopia, be thankful that the requirements were changed and you now have to make 2 trips to Ethiopia, thereby making the need to re-adopt when you return to the States voluntary instead of necessary. We thought we were lucky we only had to make the one trip and thought readoption would be a breeze. Oh, the naivety!
Hopefully there will be no further hitches and on November 19th I will post smiling photos of the newest citizen of the U.S.
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