Do You Really Need An Adoption Lawyer?

By Elias Maseko
First off, adoption lawyers are there to represent and protect the interests of couples who are going through the adoption process. All too often couples who are not represented and end up losing their savings because they have not employed an adoption lawyer to represent them in an effort to save some money. It is quite common for birth mothers or their agents to request a financial sum in advance but this is less likely to happen if the adoptive parents have their adoption lawyer with them.

It is always good to start as you mean to continue so at the first meeting, ensure your adoption lawyer is with you who can discuss general arrangements, the adoption process and inform the donor or agent that no money will be changing hands at this point. This can stop the most common deception carried out on adoptive parents of handing over cash to the baby's or child's agent (or mother) because they need it for legal fees. Then it is just a matter of having the donor supply details of their attorney so the adoption lawyer can contact him or her directly to ascertain if this is a genuine request.

It is important to remember that the responsibility for obtaining legal help for the birth mother is not that of the adoptive parents. In order to ensure fair play on the part of the birth mother, the adoption lawyer will request contact details for her including a real address where she can be contacted. Your legal representative will advise against sending out money so the birth mother can make travel arrangements as it is very easy to cash these tickets in and would be virtually untraceable.

Before making a majority of agreements with the birth mother of the infant up for adoption be sure to obtain undeniable proof of pregnancy through your adoption lawyer. Any proof that has been sent should be checked an verifies, this includes documents, by contacting the originator.

Another tactic is when an adoption scammer will pose as somebody acting on behalf of a pregnant friend who would like to put her baby up for adoption and make contact with as many people looking to adopt as possible. To avoid this type of deception, have your adoption lawyer inquire about contact with the actual birth mother and if this request is denied from the onset, avoid it at all costs.

If proceedings do continue at this point it is important to make sure that the mother who wants her baby adopted is the not the person contacting many couples. An adoption lawyer will find a deception such as this easy to check on as there will be similar phone numbers and email addresses etc.

In the beginning stages of adoption, adoptive parents must be extremely aware of the potential of getting deceived and this is why retaining the services of an adoption lawyer is so important. For a couple that may have been waiting many years to get to this point it is easy to become wrapped up in the event and not seeing what is going on but a little commonsense will stop any sadness later on.