Stahlke Adoption

One More Document

What a day! We picked up the three oldest children at the orphanage around 8:30 am, and they put on some of the new formal clothes that we've bought for them. We were dressed up, too, and when the orphanage director saw us later she expressed surprise--she's only seen all of us in our "play clothes" on the orphanage grounds (or in Jonathan's underwear at the Black Sea).

We were taken to a courtroom not far from our apartment building, and waited about 30 minutes for the judge to arrive. Besides us and the children, the others in attendance (all female) were our translator Masha, the orphanage director (representing all five children), the inspector from the county guardianship office, the lawyer that we hired last week, and the court clerk. The courtroom itself was otherwise empty of people, but had lots of furniture--three big leather chairs behind the front desk, a podium for the person speaking, tables near the front desk for the lawyer and clerk, benches way back in the room for the rest of us, and a cage to the left for criminals.

The proceedings were all conducted in Ukrainian, which is required since independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. Masha usually translates into Russian for us, which everyone here understands, and she requested Russian but the judge insisted on Ukrainian. At least we understood more that way! Whenever it was our turn to speak, we had to stand for the judge. He is about our age, and asked lots of questions. Besides confirming the basics (name, date and place of birth, occupation, salary), we had to answer questions about our decision to adopt, the contact we've had with the children, and (of course) why we want to adopt five. He also asked about the first group that we had considered, and Jonathan asked that the children be taken outside the room during that part of the discussion. The orphanage director was very kind to watch them in the outside hall during that time.

We had been told the whole process would last thirty or forty minutes, but two hours later we were still answering questions. The main issue was that in our original home study, we had requested children with ages from one to eight years old. Because three of our sibling group are over eight, the judge was concerned that the U.S. immigration service would not admit them to the country or recognize the adoption. We told him that the age request had been our ideal before coming, but was not legally binding in the U.S. We had originally chosen the age range 1-8 since younger children are often better at making the adjustment to a new country. But when we saw the photos and information about our sibling group, we were very interested in them, despite their slightly older age. And we feel that they will adjust well, due to their temperaments, good health, and togetherness as a sibling group, even though we're aware that they will face the challenges that any children adopted internationally must tackle.

The judge requested a letter from the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv, stating that the ages of the children would not be a barrier to their immigration. We adjourned at around noon, took the children back to the orphanage, and telephoned the U.S. Embassy. They prepared the letter, found the Consul General to sign it, and faxed it to our lawyer around 5 pm. So, we will appear before the judge again tomorrow, letter in hand, to continue with our court appointment. The three children will be back in their formal clothes, and will finally get their turn to stand before the judge and tell him that they want to be adopted by us. They will have to use our full names, which is why we haven't corrected them during the past two weeks if they called us Mary and Jonathan rather than Mama and Papa. We heard of one family that had to wait a week for a new court date because the children didn't know the names of their parents.

Assuming all goes well tomorrow, the judge will declare the adoption final, and Ruslan, Bogdan, Luda, Lena, and Misha will be our children. What a wonderful gift on the day of our 15th anniversary!

posted by Stahlkes @ 12:09 PM