My first role as an attorney is to help you establish a plan. Building a family is a personal decision and everybody has their individual needs and priorities. We can work together to determine what will be best for you.
Your individual priorities may be what type of child you desire, maintaining a certain budget, timing on when a child is placed, openness or confidentiality. Adoptions is building a family. It involves one family at a time paying particular attention to your individual needs.
Once we sort out your priorities, we than devise a plan so that you proceed step-by-step in a logical and efficient method.
If you are just starting the process, we can schedule an appointment by zoom or phone where we can spend up to an hour discussing your priorities and getting you started. My office charges a fee of $350.00 for this type of consultation.
If you already have identified a child or have a child in your home, then it is a matter of determining what are the best available procedures that offer the greatest protection, least risk, lowest cost and quickest results. Even if your case is entirely within Virginia, we may have a number of options in which different legal procedures are available. If multiple states are involved, then we want to weigh the procedures in both states to determine risk, cost, convenience and timing.
The practice of adoption law is both a science and an art. What I mean by that is that the lawyer not only needs to know the relevant laws but also has to be creative in combining those laws and applying precedent (previous cases) in proposing solutions that best meets the client’s needs.
