Baby questions

What is the name of your state? Iowa
I'm considering placing my as of yet unborn baby up for adoption without going through an agency. The couple who want the baby and I have yet to meet, however, because I want to make sure everything is legal before I start the process. They are willing to pay for all the legal fees (there won't be any medical that I have to pay, insurance covers it all), but will I need my own lawyer or will the one they have be enough?

Also, the father took off 4 months into the pregnancy and is in another state (I think), do I have to put him on the birth certificate? And what if we can't find him to get him to sign over his rights so the baby can be adopted? Or what if he tries to get custody of the child?

Please for your own safety, get your own lawyer or contact an adoptin agency to act as "mediators"! I went through an adoption without an attorney and it was pure hell!

The father has to be notified. It will be done by way of publication, you have to "advertise" if you don't know where he is.

You can feel free to email me and I can go into more detail...someone is knocking on my door!LOL

adoption

i am an adoptive mother. we adopted a good friend of ours baby. it took two years to finalize the adoption, although we had custody of our daughter. my husband and i retained an adoption agency who did all of the legal work for us. our situation was this-our friend lived with the biological father, who signed away his rights, but she was still legally married to someone, and she had a general idea of where he was. so he was cosidered the legal father-he had parental rights although he knew nothing about this child that wasn't even his. yes, we did have to place ads in papers up and down the california coast for a certain amount of time, and if no response was received, then the law looked at it as terminating his parental rights. with all of the horror stories that we have heard, as an adoptive parent, i would by all means have an agency involved with all the legalities, especially because the biological father may come back to haunt the adoptive parents in the future, causing a lot of pain for them, and your child. also, there are other laws regarding adoption that we weren't aware of when we adopted that had to be investigated prior to the adoption being approved. bless your heart for making such a brave and unselfish decision. you are going to give the most precious gift that anyone could give to someone, and these parents will always be grateful to you for your decision. and if you know that you are offering your child a better life than what you can offer, your child will understand someday that you made tihs decision out of love. just my thoughts from my experience.