what are my rights?

What is the name of your state? Oklahoma

my husband and i just recently had a son, he is a month old we were thinking about a inter-family adoption, our son went home w/my brother-in law we have gone back and forth on whether to keep him or give him up.alot of "barriers" and red-flags" to me has came up with having him adopted things have not gone like they should..we still dont know what to do..i want to put in the adoption plan that i can see him during the weekend if you have that in a plan would my brother-inlaw have to abide by that ??
my brother-in-law has stated that if we took him back he will sue us for evrything he spent on our son i dont mind paying him back but he wants to take it to court what would i be liable for? he saya that a deal is a deal and we should stick to orginally what was planned...what do i do??

I've read stories here about adoptive parents promising visitation and not following through on the agreement. If your parental rights are terminated and the adoption goes through, you may find that your brother-in-law tells you to get lost - forever - and you might not be able to do a darn thing about it.

He could go to court right now and ask for custody and/or guardianship - either of which would look pretty bad on you & your husband.

Hopefully somebody will come along with some real legal information for you.

I've never known of an adoption to have that. The problem I see is that you're looking for parental rights for visitation without being the parent responsible which may be how the courts see it. If the adoption goes through, he is not obligated to honor your request for visitation because you are no longer the legal parent.

I spoke with a lawyer today for another state who recommended guardianship. That would not strip your rights to visitation as a parent, but I believe you and your husband would still have obligations to support the child.

So, I believe your options are to 1) keep your child, 2) give him up for adoption and hope your brother-in-law will allow you to see your child or 3) look into guardianship.

Like I said, there may be something you could put in the agreement, but I think that fits in with you exercising parental rights that you'd be giving up.

Good luck!

i can see him during the weekend...."

I DO know some adoptive parents that have maintained "open adoptions" in which occassional contact with biofamily occurs. The adoptive families want their kids to have some contact, but certainly NEED to have their own "family time" take priority. I mean, they do have to SUPPORT their kidsby working during the week, and that usually means that family time is during the weekend. Many weekends, we take off for the day and do family things together. As a child gets older, their weekends will also be occupied with soccar, or T Ball, classmate birthday parties, and so so, and these limit a child's weekend availability even to their parents. So if you are thinking that you can run over there for a bit each weekend when you wish, it's likely not going to happen. And if you care about this child having a strong, healthy family relationship with these parents, you would want to encourage them to have good family experiences together - and those are most likely to occur on "the weekends" because the parents and kids are not occupied with work and school.