Adoptions

This law office can handle most of your family law needs in New York City, Suffolk or Nassau County Long Island, and the surrounding areas. Darren M. Shapiro, Esq. has experience helping families with their adoptions. Married couples, single adults, and unmarried couples are all permitted to adopt children in New York. Whether you need help with a private placement, agency, step parent, adult or foster parent adoption this office can help. Although most adoptions are friendly uncontested cases, sometimes issues need to be litigated or argued in the court. Since Mr. Shapiro is an experienced litigator he can assist you in either scenario.

You will receive straight talk when talking to Darren about your case. He is an effective attorney that will make strong arguments for your cause, if required, while giving you his honest assessment of your situation. The initial consultation, whether it’s over the phone or in person is free.

Family Court and the Surrogates Court have concurrent jurisdiction over adoption proceedings in New York. What this means is either court can be used. The first thing that this office will do when representing you in your adoption case is gather the necessary information and begin drafting the necessary paperwork to petition the court to approve the adoption. The kind of information we will collect will include biographical information about the proposed adoptive parents and the adoptive child. The court will need to know the medical and health history of the adoptive child when he or she was born and afterwards. It will be helpful if you have information about any known inherited medical conditions. If it is known what medications or drugs that the mother took while pregnant with the adoptive child, our office will want to know that to include in the petition to the court.

Here at the Law and Mediation Office of Darren M. Shapiro, P.C., we are going to do our best to showcase your family to the court and illustrate why the adoption is in the best interests of the child. We will ask you about any special interests, activities and skills that your family possesses to enhance the application. Our goal is to make the adoption process as smooth as possible. The more positive information we can provide the court to show the best interests of the child, the likelier the court will approve the adoption quickly.

It is advisable to use the assistance of an experienced family law attorney like Mr. Shapiro when applying for the adoption. Darren will provide you with legal advice while doing his best to present convincing reasons to the judge why the adoption should be approved. As in all matters we handle, our goal is to effectively handle the case as expeditiously as possible. Likewise, it is a policy of this office to set reasonable rates.

It will be helpful to have the birth certificate of the child that is to be adopted as the court will look for that to be included with the adoption petition. The court will want to learn why and when the child came to be with or will be with the adoptive family. Information about others, besides the parents and the subject child, that live in the proposed adoptive household will be of interest to the court. If there has been a legal determination about custody or guardianship about the child, this information needs to be a part of the petition. Properly executed consent forms from the biological, legal parents or guardians of the child are helpful in each case, but in certain circumstances the consent is not required. For proposed adoptive children fourteen years of age or older the court will look for their consent or a reason why their consent should be waived. The court ultimately has the ability, depending on the circumstances of the particular case, to decide what consents are necessary.

Once the petition is filled out, the court will require notice of the proceedings to be given to anyone entitled to be notified under the law. Sometimes personal delivery of the notice is not possible with reasonable efforts. The court might be able to waive personal service depending on the circumstances. Usually the legal parents, guardians, people who have declared paternity or someone married to the birth mother during the six month time period subsequent to the birth, among other people deserve notice under the law.

After the application is complete, and any required notice served, the court will usually order an investigation. Social workers, psychologists or others that have the appropriate experience to gather the pertinent information for the court may be used. The investigator should then issue a report, in the appropriate form, for the court to consider whether the adoption is in the best interests of the child.　

This office has experience representing clients through the adoption process. Feel free to call to discuss your step parent, foster parent, adult, agency or private placement adoption. The initial consultation in person or over the phone is free. It would be our pleasure to speak with you about it.