Growing your family may be a goal you’ve had for many years, and now, you want to see it come to fruition. In Tennessee, you can adopt through an adoption agency or attorney.
There are a few basic things to know about adoption within the state. First, if you wish to adopt a newborn, you’ll have to wait at least three days after the child’s birth before the birth parent has a right to give up the child. On top of that, the consenting party has up to 10 days to take away consent if he or she changes his or her mind. In cases of duress or fraud, individuals may have up to 30 days to revoke consent.
You are not legally allowed to pay a person for a child, but you can pay an individual for certain expenses including living expenses, legal expenses and hospital expenses. Medical and counseling treatments are both able to be paid for by the adopting parents. You are only able to pay for living expenses for 90 days before the birth and 45 days following it.
If you don’t want to adopt from Tennessee but do want to adopt internationally, you may wish to adopt from a Hague Convention country. If the child enters the U.S. with an IH-3 visa, then he or she receives U.S. citizenship automatically. Those who are adopted from countries not part of the Hague Convention need to first qualify as orphans, and then the adoptive parents must apply for the child’s citizenship at a later date.
Source: Adoption, “Adoption in Tennessee,” accessed June 08, 2018