Adoption Aggravation

We were recently approached about adopting Fay's little brother, and we couldn't be more thrilled.  He's almost five months old and a complete doll.  Unfortunately, the adoption process is as difficult as ever.

Because we don't need an agency to find us a birth mother, we thought it would be easier and less expensive to go with a private adoption.  We retained a lawyer who reassured us that the process would be extremely fast and painless.  He said all we needed to do was go to Tennessee and have the birth mother sign a paper relinquishing her rights to us, and we could bring the baby home.  When we adopted Fay, we had a great deal of legal work to go through, as well as being required to stay in Fay's home state for two weeks while interstate compact was finalized.  Needless, to say we were thrilled.

Then entered DCFS.

We discovered that our home state requires a current home study for any adoption.  We approached the local DCFS office to have a home study done and we were brushed off.  We called state headquarters and the director of the state was extremely rude to us and flatly refused to do a home study for us, even though we are in her area, even though the local office is willing to help, and even though the local office is two blocks from our house, because we're rural. 

No kidding.  Most of the state is rural.

We then contacted a private agency that does home studies and was told they would come do it for us, but it would cost a minimum of $4,000 with no cap on it.  We contacted LDS Family Services, who did our prior adoption, because, although more than $4,000, they at least have a flat fee.  The man over our area told us he could come on Tuesday to do a home study, and we were ecstatic.

Then he started backpedaling.

When he found out the state director of DCFS was mad at us (let me point out, we did nothing wrong, she was the one that was rude), he started waffling and saying there's no way he could do our home study on Tuesday because he needed to make sure that his working relationship with DCFS was really good because they handle the interstate compact.  He repeatedly told me that he was going to proceed intentionally slowly to make sure that DCFS was happy.  He also said he could do the home study, but not the six months of follow up visits required by state law once the baby was placed.  He told us to ask DCFS if they would do the follow up visits.

Surprisingly, and rather illogically, they said yes.

Now dude is coming on Tuesday again.

I'm exhausted.  And I have a cold.