One way that parents who would like to adopt can be connected with the child or children who will become part of their family is through a process called legal risk adoption. In a legal risk adoption, children are placed with a prospective adoptive family before they are legally freed for adoption.
A child may not be legally adopted until their birth parents either relinquish their parental rights or their parental rights are terminated by the state. With legal risk adoption placement, the termination of parental rights (and the subsequent adoption of the child) is a highly likely outcome, which has not happened yet simply because the process of terminating parental rights takes some time if the birth parents do not choose to relinquish their rights voluntarily.
Many children in the Kansas foster care system are involved in cases where adoption is their case plan goal. Prospective parents who look at lists of waiting children throughout the state do not see the names of these children, as they have not yet been legally freed for adoption. The risk that the child will not be legally freed for adoption varies in each case. In some cases, the state has already brought a petition to terminate the parental rights of the child’s birth parents but the termination has not been finalized because the parents have contested it. Parents have a right to contest the termination of their parental rights, and to present evidence in support of their position that their rights should not be terminated. If a case has already gotten to the point where a petition to terminate parental rights has been filed, it is very difficult for a parent to convince the court that their rights should not be terminated.
In other cases, birth parents initially contest the petition for termination of their parental rights but then decide to voluntarily relinquish their parental rights at some point before the hearing at which they would present their case against termination. Upon the parents’ voluntary relinquishment of their parental rights, the child is legally freed for adoption. In some cases, one or both of the child’s birth parents do persuade the court to allow them to keep their parental rights and the children are not legally freed for adoption. These cases represent the risk in legal risk adoption cases; the risk that the child that you are caring for will not be legally freed for adoption. Despite the aforementioned, prospective parents who have participated in legal risk adoptions are often connected with a child or group of children who become part of their family.
Adoption can be an emotionally trying process, and legal risk adoptions have even more twists and turns than other types of adoptions. According to parents who have successfully completed a legal risk adoption, the reward of welcoming a child into your family makes it well worth the wait. As you work to prepare yourself for parenthood, your Kansas Adoption Attorney will be by your side, advocating for your best interest throughout the adoption process. Kansas Adoption Attorney Thomas McDowell has helped many families through the adoption process, and he would welcome the opportunity to help you. Please call (316) 269-0746 today to schedule an initial consultation.
