Adopting From Russia - General Information
On this page:
About this website
About International Adoption from Russia
Good Websites and Information
About this
website
This website is a moderated forum for sharing information. Unlike
a chat room or message board or mailing list, the information is filtered and
organized and duplicated entries are eliminated. Wherever it
makes sense, information is dated.
Those of you who use the site before you travel are earnestly
encouraged to revisit the site after you return from Russia
and share your own experiences via the Contribution form.
The topics in the website are arranged in roughly chronological
order, starting with the making your dossier and ending
with references and useful links. You can go forward and backward in
this sequence with the BACK and NEXT links on each
page. You can jump to any topic from the gray topic bar
at the bottom of the page.
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The most popular items in the bookstore:
The best single, concise source of Russian adoption information is John Maclean's
Russian
Adoption Handbook for $23.06.
Pimsleur Russian tapes
-- 8 or 16 half hour lessons for $21 or $42.
Teresa Kelleher's 'Adopting
from Russia' booklet and language CD for $45. Note: this item isn't
from Amazon and doesn't qualify for free shipping.
Check out First
Thousand Words in Russian for $10.36.
Buy a Leap Frog educational toy for your child!
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About
International Adoption in Russia
There is obviously no one answer to 'how long does it take to
adopt a child from Russia?,' but the best single answer is 'about 9 months.'
This encompasses completing your homestudy and dossier, waiting for BCIS approval,
waiting for a referral and waiting for a court date.
You are not eligible to receive a referral until your dossier
is complete and has been processed by the Ministry of Education in a region
in Russia.
To be eligible for international adoption, children must be on a regional and then national adoption registry for a total of 8 months. During this time, they are available only to Russians.
As of April 2000, adopting parent(s) must appear personally before the Ministry
of Education to receive referrals. This means that the adoptive parent(s) must
make one trip to Russia to accept a referral and another trip to adopt the child
in a Russian court. However, the use of facilitators appears to continue. This
is good news for the majority of us who do not speak Russian or have any clue
how to navigate the Russian bureaucracy.
The delay between accepting the referral and getting a court date can be anywhere from a day (very unusual) to several months.
When working with an accredited
agency, referrals may be received without traveling to Russia. When working
with these agencies, many regions are on the 'one trip' system that was used
before the April 2000 law change. The list of accredited agencies is available
on this website.
After adopting in Russian court, there is a 10 day right of recission, similar to what we have in the US when you sign a contract. During this 10 days, you may reverse your decision. People refer to this as the '10 day waiting period.' Usually, people want the judge to waive the 10 day waiting period so they can return immediately to the US. Fewer and fewer regions are waiving the waiting period.
There is more information about the laws on the Cities page.
Two overviews of the international adoption process: 1 2
The best single, concise source of Russian
adoption information is John Maclean's Russian
Adoption Handbook.
"Loosey goosey, go with the flow" is what we were told
over and over again by the couple who traveled the year before us. You will
have very little, if any, control over how the process works once you step off
the plane. The less you chafe at not being in control, the better you will feel.
Related to "Loosey goosey, go with the flow" is: Don't piss
off your facilitator. There is always a chance you'll
be back for a second child and you don't want to burn your bridges before you
cross them. We had a great relationship with our facilitator and jotted on the
back of our Christmas card, "Please keep us in mind for a little girl." She
had one for us in February! [We weren't ready then and didn't accept a referral
until summer.]
As one volunteer at Adopting from Russia put it, "Although
it seems like graft to Americans, everything in Russia is done not only by who
you know, but by what he/she has done for you lately. This often takes the form
of "gifts" which look suspiciously like bribes to us, but are just part of the
Russian way of life."
If cost is a major concern, compare the costs reported by different
people on the Agency Info
page. Or, you might want to look into independent adoption from Ukraine, which
is outside the scope of Adopting from Russia. It costs less, but be
aware that the amount of time you must spend abroad is generally longer. Cathy Harris has adopted from Ukraine and is active in helping others to
do so. There are more links about
Ukrainian adoption on the Links page.
Good Websites
Russian adoption information at Adoption.about.com.
A web site about Russia at moscow-guide.ru.
www.russianadoption.org has a lot of mostly medical information, plus more links.
"International Orphan Adoption in Russia"
by the US Embassy in Moscow.
There are even more websites on my Links
page.