Adoption
If you decide on this noble and humane act, then adopting a minor child, you must follow the procedure established by family law.
Thus, according to Article 124 of the RF IC, adoption (hereinafter referred to as adoption) is a priority form of placement for children left without parental care.
2. Adoption is permitted in relation to minor children and only in their interests in compliance with the requirements of paragraph three of paragraph 1 of Article 123 of this Code, as well as taking into account the opportunities to provide children with full physical, mental, spiritual and moral development.
3. The adoption of brothers and sisters by different persons is not allowed, except in cases where the adoption is in the interests of the children.
4. The adoption of children by foreign citizens or stateless persons is permitted only in cases where it is not possible to transfer these children for upbringing to families of citizens of the Russian Federation permanently residing in the territory of the Russian Federation, or for adoption to relatives of the children, regardless of the citizenship and place of residence of these relatives .
Children may be placed for adoption by citizens of the Russian Federation permanently residing outside the territory of the Russian Federation, foreign citizens or stateless persons who are not relatives of the children, after twelve months from the date of receipt of information about such children in the federal data bank on children left without parental care.
From the analysis of the article it follows that a minor child can be adopted if one or both parents have given consent, one or both parents have died or been declared dead by the court, have been declared missing by the court, have been declared incompetent by the court, or have been deprived of parental rights.
It is worth noting that if you want to adopt a child who has one of the parents, you must be married to this parent and he must agree to the adoption. At the same time, to adopt an orphan or a child left without parental care, it is not necessary to be married. If you are already married, your spouse does not have to adopt a child with you - consent to adoption is sufficient.
Close relatives of the child have priority rights to adopt orphans and children left without parental care.
Stages of adoption
It is necessary to undergo training at a school for foster parents (close relatives of the child, stepmothers and stepfathers are not required);
Then obtain permission for adoption from the guardianship and trusteeship authorities;
Register as an adoptive parent, also with the guardianship authorities;
Meet with the child in the presence of the guardianship authorities;
Apply to the court with a claim for adoption;
Register the adoption with the civil registry office;
Adoption procedure in court.
According to Article 125 of the RF IC, adoption is carried out by the court upon the application of the person(s) wishing to adopt a child. The consideration of cases on the adoption of a child is carried out by the court in a special proceeding according to the rules provided for by civil procedural legislation. Cases regarding the adoption of children are considered by the court with the obligatory participation of the adoptive parents themselves, the guardianship and trusteeship authorities, as well as the prosecutor.
Adoption cases take place only in court.
Thus, the adoption procedure is not complicated, but it requires the preparation and participation of a professional lawyer who will help with the selection of documents and support of the case in court and the registry office and guardianship authorities
Applying for adoption
Submission of all papers required for the court is possible in two ways: through the court office and directly to the judge. Submitting documents through the office is a rather formal process - come to office hours and submit documents according to the list, receive a list of submitted documents and wait for a notification (usually a telephone call) about the acceptance of the case for proceedings and the appointment of a date and time for the trial.
The second way allows you to significantly save time by eliminating the running around when there are errors in documents and unproductive waiting. To do this, you need to find out which of the judges serves the street on which the institution (house) in which the child lives is located, the visiting hours and procedure for receiving the judge, whether a preliminary registration is required or there is a regular waiting list. Take with you the Application, all attachments to it, your passport and wait for the reception, at which you outline the essence of the case and hand over the documents. The convenience of submitting an application to a judge also lies in the fact that the judge can accept copies, comparing them with the original, without notarization, and even accept documents if they are not completely collected (the main ones are there, but some formally required ones are missing), while setting a date hearing and giving you time to collect the missing documents, and if the documents are in order and you are in a hurry, you can ask for the hearing to be scheduled for the earliest possible date.
The application must be considered within no more than 2 months from the date of its acceptance (Article 154, paragraph 1). Although this is not a long period of time compared to other civil cases, it is too long to decide the fate of a child. Taking this into account, judges usually try to reduce the waiting time as much as possible and schedule the hearing for the next possible day. The prosecutor rarely participates in civil trials and does not come to the civil court every day (usually these are designated days); therefore, the hearing is scheduled for the next “prosecutor’s day.” In practice, the actual waiting time for consideration of an application ranges from one week to three.
An adopted child is not a weather improver in the home
Nadezhda Teryokhina:
– The most common expectation from a child, in my experience, is “yes, we have conflicts in our family, but now we’ll take the child and everything will work out.” This is a case when adoption should be postponed.
Alena Sinkevich:
– The idea “even if everything is not very good with us, but I will raise my little one and put everything I can into him” is bad in this case, since it is, in fact, an inflated expectation. In the head of such a mother, a scenario arises in which the child’s role is predetermined: “Now the child will come and improve our relationship.”
But, firstly, the child does not have the task of improving someone’s relationships, he has the task of growing and learning to interact with people. Moreover, in this situation, parents try to solve some of their problems at the expense of the child, and the child becomes a means.
Nadezhda Teryokhina:
- Blood children can really keep a family from falling apart - not when, hoping to improve their relationship, spouses give birth to a child, but when mom and dad don’t divorce “for the sake of the children.” In some cases, spouses in this situation have time to talk through the situation and sort things out, and the family is preserved.
The situation when an adopted child appears in a family is fundamentally different. The mother felt the natural, natural child throughout the pregnancy; she feels physical contact with him. An adopted child is a stranger, there is no contact with him at the body level, you need to feel him, build a relationship from scratch. Very often, the entire family system is rebuilt.
Many adoptive parents at a certain stage in relation to their adopted child experience the feeling “This person is interfering with my life.”
If there were problems in the family before the birth of the child, they will get worse. In the most serious case, the child will also be blamed for the fact that the family has collapsed.
+ Provocations of children
Alena Sinkevich:
“Recently, one of our mothers in our care saw a photo of a child on the Internet and began insistently saying that she would take this girl. The child had special needs, and this mother’s family at that moment was obviously not ready for another child; Mom's decision was emotional and illogical. The woman was stopped by the psychologist’s question: “Tell me, what happened to you at the age of this child?”
After therapy, my mother realized that the desire to adopt this girl meant saving herself at the same age, and all this had nothing to do with the child. What exactly happened to her then, my mother did not say. The transfer of one's own memories to a child who looks similar in appearance is called projection in psychology. This is a very common form of psychological defense, and the possibility of such a reaction must be kept in mind.
In another situation, a child with ADHD, when coming home, kept forgetting to take off his street shoes. Dad, who in childhood had a situation where his opinion was not taken into account, read this act as: “They spit on me again.” The situation escalated almost until the child was returned and was resolved only when the childhood memory of the adoptive father was worked through.
How adoptive parents are tested in the USA
For comparison: in the USA, when testing candidates for adoptive parents, they look at the history of three generations - the candidates themselves, their parents, and grandparents. The lives of all the defendants are examined in great detail - whether their parents divorced, created new families, whether any of them drank, or showed cruelty or inattention to family members. In this way, they investigate, for example, cases of abuse of candidates in childhood or neglect of his interests, such as “the father did not pay enough attention to his son.” All such biographical details do not prevent the applicant from applying for an adopted child, but he will not be given a child until he has worked through all potentially dangerous situations for the adoption of a child with a psychotherapist.
Nadezhda Teryokhina:
– And in a family that is very concerned about how it looks from the outside, the adopted child will most likely commit provocations in order to test how much they really love him. If mom and dad are concerned about the neighbors' opinions, the child will draw something on the neighbor's door and place a firecracker on the neighbor's door.
If dad really wants to look good in front of the boss, at a family dinner where this boss was invited, the child will begin to say obscenities and behave indecently.
That is, the child deliberately incurs the wrath of others on his parents and waits to see what his parents will do with him.
What should adoptive parents not do?
Alena Sinkevich:
– You should not take a child if you are being treated for bulimia or anorexia nervosa . Both of these diagnoses are not specified as contraindications, but, as a rule, are associated with high anxiety, which indicates the candidate’s psychological distress. It may be difficult for such a person to survive the stress of the adaptation period; the likelihood that his condition will further deteriorate during this period is extremely high.
Unfortunately, both bulimia and anorexia not in the extreme stage are quite difficult to notice from the outside. That is, a candidate with such diseases can only stop himself.
Also, you should not take a child in the active stage of depression . Fortunately, there is therapy and treatment for depression as a consequence of a dramatic event, for example, the loss of loved ones. If there is no depressive episode by the time you start collecting the package of documents, you can take the child. In cases where the depressive state is chronic, it is necessary to consult with your doctor.
You cannot take a child if someone in the family is alcoholic . As a rule, drinking is a symptom of much more serious conditions. “If I don’t drink in the evening, I can’t bear to be at home” - this is an unstable family with a difficult situation. If “I can’t relax without drinking,” the person has problems with his emotional status. If a person falls into depression without alcohol, the threat of depression needs to be dealt with.
Nadezhda Teryokhina:
– Treatment of one of the family members for any addiction is a clear contraindication to taking a child. Couples often come to our school in which the husband has recently been “fixed” or coded. It seems to them that they are already ready for a child.
But even if treatment for any addiction has been going on for a long time, the person has achieved remission and has socialized, it is not worth taking a child for at least a year and a half from the start of rehabilitation.
The fact is that during treatment for addiction, a person needs attention and support. If, during a period when a person has just begun to establish a stable life, a new child appears in the family, the whole way of life will undergo a change, and the level of stress will greatly increase. In addition, a person who has just learned to be responsible for himself will also need to be responsible for someone else. In this situation, there is a possibility that the person will break down.
If you have lost your child, wait at least a year
Alena Sinkevich:
– It is dangerous to take in an adopted child in all cases where there are unprocessed traumas associated with the parents’ past. First of all, this is the loss of a natural child .
This is not to say that candidates who have lost their natural children should not take adopted children at all.
But you need to ask yourself very carefully: “When I take on a new child, am I going to bring back the dead one?”
The trauma of loss can be quite long-standing; if a person has not had the opportunity in life to live through his grief and let it go, the birth of a new child can become a trigger that will stir up an old trauma.
The “replacement” path is bad because the new child is a DIFFERENT person, with his own reactions and needs. Unprocessed trauma is dangerous: when the restructuring of the family’s life for a new member begins, the mother may be thrown into grief. Such a mother may, for example, begin to hate the new child because its appearance reminds of past pain, or because the new child is not the one who died, and she is forced to hug her adopted child, although she would like to hug her deceased one.
Nadezhda Terekhina:
– It’s worth taking a pause if one of your close relatives has recently died in the family. For example, if the mother of the future adoptive mother died, the woman needs time to live through her grief. A grieving person experiences strong emotions and experiences many unfinished relationships. This requires a lot of effort and time. At this time, the woman will not be able to fully care for the child, because the appearance of someone else’s child, especially a teenager, in the house requires parents to attract all resources.
How much a person will grieve is measured not by the degree of relationship, but by how close the deceased was to him. Fully processing the loss usually takes about a year.
