Legal Mumbo-Jumbo! Our day in court.

(Since the last post...) We thought we had our court date for readoption in the state of Mississippi on January 16th...BUT, then Ben gets a phone call. No, we were just needed to come to the courthouse to meet with the lawyer to sign some initial paperwork to get a petition to adopt in the court. What a bummer! Anyways, this is the low down on our situation, now. We reviewed the paperwork our lawyer wanted us to sign off on...As I looked over it, Ben pressed me to go on, go on and sign it...BUT, there were errors! I think I have an eye for documentation errors, especially when it involves our family stats, like the place and date of our marriage!!! Hello? Ben was off by 50 miles and 3 days! Then, there were errors concerning the children's birthparents' names, as well as two pages missing on what the lawyer thought was the court decree from Colombia (however, it was really the official referral from ICBF).

So, we were asked to get the corrected info back to the lawyer before this week as she was due back in this area for court this week and with that info would be able to file a motion to petition the court. So, we faxed her a copy of the court decree, along with emailing her the names of the children's birthparents.

Now, the lawyer will petition the court to grant us the adoption, but first we must place an ad in the paper for 30 days asking if there is anyone who is related to these children and who contest this adoption to come forward. Ugh, waiting more...then after that 30 days, we wait for the "official" court date! We will sit before the judge and he will make an official judgement granting the adoption in the state of Mississippi.

The lawyer stated that all this is necessary and is important as it protects us; even though, we adopted the children in Colombia, if anything were ever to break down or the courts changed their mind over there and they tried to take the children away from us, they would not be able to because we have legally re-adopted them here in the states. So, cool...let's do it! I'm ready to get all the paperwork, court, and post-placements done!

One other note: we have asked the God-parents to join us when we go to court. We hope nothing would ever happen to the both of us before the children will be able to care for themselves, before we are able to see grandchildren and greats, BUT...reality is that people die everyday. My sister never would have imagined she would have died at such a young age. She would have done things differently. But she is not here, yet she teaches me still...and I want something in place in the event that Ben and I die and the children are without parents. Greg and Mandy have vowed to us (I've asked several times- obsessive like that!) that they would take care, take custody of the children. They will make sure that family get to be involved with the children, but because of possible "hoop-la" that we don't want the children exposed to, we have elected to have a couple outside of our immediate family who we both trust, raise our children. Because of the significance of that, to us, it is important that they stand with us, in agreement, as the judged signs the final decree, that we will raise up these children to the best of our ability giving them the emotional, spiritual, physical, and financial support they need. What an "awesome" responsibility! God is so good, and He is faithful even when we are not. We pray that this re-adoption move quickly...we will post more about this once finalized!