Our Iowa Adoption Services
If you’re looking for adoption services or adoption assistance in Iowa, Nelson Law Firm, PLLC, can provide all of the legal adoption help that you need to add a child to your family.
Whether you’re looking to adopt an infant or an older child or looking to legalize an existing parent-child relationship with a stepparent or relative adoption, our two attorneys and eight staff members can provide the adoption support and adoption-related services that you need to safely, effectively and legally complete your adoption in Iowa.
We offer several legal adoption programs for our clients. Our team can help you:
A private domestic infant adoption requires many legal steps to make sure that a prospective birth mother understands her rights, the adoptive parents obtain the proper parental rights to the child, and that everything taking place in between is completed legally. Attorney Ken Nelson will ensure all of these legal adoption services are handled when you work with our law firm.
Some of the legal adoption support our law firm provides is:
- Filing the necessary paperwork with the court
- Ensuring birth parents understand and legally consent to the termination of their parental rights
- Informing you of legal post-placement requirements for your adoption
- Completing Interstate Compact on the Placement of Children or Indian Child Welfare Act requirements, if necessary
- Arranging your finalization hearing to complete the legal adoption process
- Obtaining a birth certificate for your adopted child
Throughout this process, our law firm will also offer you the general adoption assistance you need to complete your overall adoption process, including referring you to a matching agency to find a prospective birth mother or trained counselors for emotional support during this complicated process. Some of these professionals can even provide you post-adoption services like contact mediation.
If you are the stepparent of your spouse’s child, you may wish to legalize your parent-child relationship with a stepparent adoption. Not only does this process demonstrate an emotional commitment to your family relationship, but it will also bring other financial and practical benefits, like ensuring inheritance and insurance coverage, claiming your child on your taxes and protecting you from custody challenges.
The legal process of a stepparent adoption in Iowa is a fairly simple one, and attorney Ken Nelson can provide all of the legal adoption support you need. This includes:
- Obtaining consents from the noncustodial parent or filing an action to terminate their rights
- Gathering the necessary paperwork and filing an adoption petition with your local court
- Arranging the court hearing for the stepparent adoption
- And more
Not all adoptions involve a child who is unrelated to the adopting parents. Many grandparents, aunts, uncles and older siblings and cousins seek to assist a younger relative by legally adopting them and providing them a more stable family environment to grow up in.
Nelson Law Firm can help you complete your relative adoption in Iowa by completing all of the necessary legal adoption services, like:
- Obtaining consents from the child’s legal parents or filing an action to terminate their parental rights
- Filing an adoption petition with the court and finalizing the adoption with a hearing
- Obtaining a new birth certificate and social security number for the child
Like a stepparent adoption, a relative adoption can be a relatively simple legal adoption process. Nelson Law Firm can provide the adoption assistance to make it even easier for you.
If you’re looking to adopt a foster child in Iowa, Nelson Law Firm can help with your legal process. You’ll need to work with a child-placing agency like the Iowa Department of Human Services or a private agency to find an adoption situation first, and then attorney Ken Nelson can provide the legal adoption services in Iowa that you’ll need to complete the process.
Adopting a child from foster care is one of the most inexpensive adoption processes available to you; you may even receive a tax credit or subsidy for the adoption services you receive from our law firm. Because foster children who are available for adoption in Iowa have already had their parents’ rights terminated, the legal process is fairly simple. It includes:
- Filing an adoption petition with the court
- Meeting post-placement requirements
- Arranging and attending a finalization hearing
Nelson Law Firm can complete all of these adoption services for you to make the process as efficient and easy as possible.
Complete an International Re-Adoption
When you adopt a child overseas, it’s highly recommended that you complete an international re-adoption when you arrive back in Iowa. This process protects not only your parental rights to your child but also your child’s right to live in the United States as an American citizen. It also gives you the chance to legally change your child’s name and obtain a U.S-issued birth record. Most important, perhaps, it ensures you can obtain additional copies of your child’s certificate of foreign birth, which can be extremely difficult to replace from your child’s native country.
When you work with Nelson Law Firm, our lawyers will handle every step of this re-adoption process, including:
- Gathering and submitting important paperwork and translations
- Filing an adoption petition and arranging a hearing to finalize the adoption
- Obtaining a final adoption decree, name change and certificate of foreign birth
In other cases, an adult may wish to adopt another person who is over the age of 18. This is usually to legally recognize an existing parent-child relationship, like the relationship between former foster parents and a former foster child or that between a stepparent and a stepchild who is over 18.
Like with other adoption processes, Nelson Law Firm can:
- File an adoption petition and arrange a court hearing to legally finalize the adoption
- Obtain the necessary consents from the adopting adults and the adult to be adopted
- And provide other legal adoption services
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In addition to these legal adoption services in Iowa, we are happy to provide you references to other adoption help, like references to matching agencies who can provide adoption advertising, adoption counseling and post-adoption services. We are dedicated to providing the best adoption assistance to our clients, which means we’re prepared to refer you to additional professionals for services that our law firm does not provide.
To learn more about our adoption services in Iowa and how we can help you legally add a child to your family, please contact us today at 319-291-6161 or through our online form.