do-it-yourself step-parent adoption

My husband has a son and I have a daughter from previous marriages. My step-son's mother is deceased and my daughters father agrees to her being adopted. It is a very simple matter. I would like to do the adoption myself because of the expenses involved. Can anyone help me find the legal papers needed. I have seen several adoption packets on the net but none mention a "step-parent" adoption. I live in Idaho also! Also if anyone has done this with a lawyer and would be willing to send me copies of their documents i could at least copy the format. I have done this before in other legal matters and it worked out fine. I would appreciate some help! Thank you!

Hi. My husband and I, who live in CA, did our entire stepparent adoption ourselves. What we did was we went to Borders and found the law or legal section. There is a book by Nolo publications called "How to Adopt Your Stepchild in California". They also have a website, [url]www.nolo.com[/url] that has tons of do-it-yourself info.

I don't know if they have anything for the state of Idaho or not, but it's worth a try. Doing this ourselves saved us thousands in legal fees, and this book contained a cd-rom of every legal document you need for this process, and it even included the forms already printed out in the book, too.

Good luck, and I hope you can find the information you need!

I am in the process of adopting my SD and what we did was call the local court house and ask what we needed to do.

They told us to come up and pick up an adoption packet for a step parent adoption. Hubby went and picked up the packet, we filled it out and sent the papers for BM to her so that she could sign them in front of a notary, and we have sent our request for a homestudy. We live in NC and we have to have one before the adoption can be final.

Doing it ourselves is costing us much less than it would with a lawyer. It was going to be nearly $1000 with the lawyer doing it. Doing it ourselves, it is going to cost us $250 for the homestudy and $40 for the filing fees.

Good Luck!!

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