June 28, 2018 will be a day that I never forget. It was the day that our "Baby Doe" became Camden Ivey Bolton forever. It is surreal that our adoption journey is over and I don't think it has quite sunk in yet. It seems like yesterday when I announced we were adopting and here we are 11 months since that announcement and our son is legally ours. God is good!
I have intentionally left our court hearings off of the blog as I didn't want to say anything until the adoption was finalized. With adoption, there are 2 different court hearings that have to happen before the adoption is considered finalized. The first is the termination of parental rights and that court hearing was on April 13th. Although our birth mom had already signed over her rights, a judge has to officially declare the termination of parental rights. Our lawyer represented us so we did not have to travel back to Florida for that hearing. Everything went good and it was a relief to have that court date behind us.
Our agency had to wait 30 days after the termination of parental rights before they could request a date for the finalization hearing. In the back of my mind, I was thinking we would probably finalize sometime in July but God surprised us again with a June court date. This was a blessing as Florida requires a post placement visit with our social worker once a month until the adoption is finalized. Those visits are NOT cheap so it was a blessing that we did not have to pay for a visit in June. Another surprise was that we finalized on the same day that Shannon finalized her adoption. How crazy is that?
Our hearing was scheduled for 9:45 AM yesterday and we had to have a notary present with us. At 9:43 AM, my phone rang and it was the judge as well as our lawyer. It was such a cool experience as our notary had to swear us in under oath and then the judge proceed to ask us to state our full names. Our lawyer then asked us a series of questions and Craw went first.
The questions were:
Do you understand that if something happens to your marriage, by granting this adoption, either one of you can sue for custody of this child?
And either one of you could have a child support obligation?
And this child becomes your legal heir as if born to you?
And knowing that, do you wish to proceed?
Are you asking this court to change the child's name? If so, what is the name you are requesting.
Short. Sweet. And to the point. We both took turns answering the questions and at 9:49 AM, the judge legally declared Camden our son.
We have treated him as our son since the day he was born. Even though we didn't meet him until his 2nd day of life, he was already our son in our hearts. However, legally he was not our son and we were seen as his guardians. There is so much joy, thankfulness, and love in my heart knowing that he is mine forever. It is also bittersweet that our adoption journey is now over.
We ended the day by celebrating with both of our families. We enjoyed a nice dinner at Pauls and Camden even sat in a high chair for the first time and loved it. He also now has a tooth so this has been a BIG week for us. We love this boy more than words can even describe and are so blessed that God chose us to be his parents.
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