Helping You Welcome a New Member to Your Family
The Davis Law Office of Yasmin Cogswell Spiegel has more than 18 years of experience helping families welcome new children through adoption. Whether you want to open your home to a needy child, or wish to have a step-parent or partner adopt your biological child, we provide legal guidance to make the process successful.
Independent Adoptions
When a child is placed with new parents by a person who subsequently terminates their parental rights, it is considered an independent adoption. For instance, if a young mother and father decide not to retain custody of a newborn, the child is placed with his or her new parents who then take the child home from the hospital. Once the child is born, a Petition for Adoption is filed. You can facilitate your independent adoption through an adoption agency or a placing party, such as California's Children's Home Services.
Attorney Yasmin C. Spiegel understands the joy an adopted child can bring to your family. She has been helping families complete independent and stepparent adoptions for more than 18 years. She can also provide you with legal advice about other parental rights issues.
Stepparent Adoptions
Stepparent adoptions used to apply only to heterosexual married couples wishing for a new spouse to legally adopt the biological parent's child. Today, gay and lesbian domestic partners can also use the step-parent adoption process to allow one partner to legally adopt the biological parent's child. In both situations, the consent of your child's other biological parent or termination of that person's parental rights is required.
Terminating Parental Rights
In certain appropriate cases where a parent refuses to give up their rights, we will help you proceed with the adoption by initiating legal action to terminate the other parent's rights. Yasmin Spiegel also has extensive experience representing the non-custodial parent who is fighting the termination of his or her parental rights. There are many ways to address a parent/child relationship which may be explored, including open adoption and contracts to continue visitation with the child after an adoption, if it appears to all parties that this would benefit the child. Depending on the situation and legal details, government agencies, such as the Department of Social Services, will likely be involved.
Unknown Biological Parent
When you do not know the location of your child's other biological parent or you do not know their identity, legal procedures must be followed before the adoption may proceed. One important step is to publish notice of the proceeding in the newspaper of general circulation most likely to give actual notice in a town where the biological parent likely lives. Notice and a right to be heard in the proceeding is a fundamental Constitutional right of all parents.
Contact a Lawyer Today
The adoption process can take time. To discuss how we can help you welcome a new member into your family, please call us in Yolo County at 530-554-9241, or send us an e-mail.
