How long does the adoption process take

What is the name of your state? NC

How long does a non contested step parent adoption take? Are there any reasons that the adoption would not be finalized by the judge if this is what everyone wants?

Thanks

The only reason I could think of is that all the legal criteria for such an adoption have not been met (length of marriage, home study when required, etc.).

It doesn't go before a judge, it goes before the Clerk of Court.

It can take a long time depending on fast the attorney gets the paperwork done. Once the petition is submitted to the Clerk of Court's office they have a certain amount of days to respond. I think it's 30 but I could be wrong. Also, DSS has to be notified so they can do a homestudy. They have a certain amount of time they have to respond. I don't remember exactly how many days it is. Then they have X amount of time to get the homestudy done. This is where a big delay can happen. They can take forever getting this done, so you would need to stay on their butts about it. It can take several months for everything to get done. Usually 3 is the minimum but often takes longer.

As long as DSS approves the homestudy there is usually no reason why the Clerk of Court would oppose a consentual stepparent adoption, with the exceptions that nextwife mentioned.

Here's NC laws on adoptions.

http://www.ncga.state.nc.us/gascripts/Statutes/StatutesTOC.pl?Chapter=0048

Grace_Adler said:

It doesn't go before a judge, it goes before the Clerk of Court. [/url]

Click to expand...

That must be specific to NC. When we re-adopted locally, following our international adoption (which had already gone before a judge over there) we went before a judge in our county court. WE even have a photo of us and the judge with our screaming, cranky 2 1/2 year old, who had missed a nap after sitting outside the judges courtroom three hours waiting to be called. The same courts that do adoption mostly hear delinquent juveniles, at least here.

It might be just NC, I'm not sure if any other states are set up the same way as us. I just know here, it goes through the Clerk of Court. LOL

Yeah it's always fun to have to wait around for hours for them to get to you, especially with a 2 yr old that hasn't slept. Maybe that's why they have the Clerk of Court do the adoptions here; to break up the work load, amount of cases or whatever.

Oh yeah, I forgot to put up the links to the forms.

http://info.dhhs.state.nc.us/olm/forms/dss/