International Re-Adoption


Imagine the following scenario:

You are an adoptive parent of a child born abroad, who decides to apply for a driver’s license on his or her 16th birthday. However, not only is your child’s application denied, but you also learn that he or she is not a U.S. citizen and has an expired visa!

We often receive phone calls from Texas adoptive families in these situations who believed their international adoption and child’s citizenship was finalized under The Child Citizenship Act of 2000, which was intended to automatically grant citizenship to children adopted by US citizens. While this law has helped immensely, it, unfortunately, does not apply to all children adopted internationally.

Introducing International Re-adoption

Don’t put yourself and your child in this situation.

An international re-adoption is a court order from the State of Texas that clearly establishes a parent-child relationship under U.S. law, and it provides US birth certificate for your child. Readopting may assist you with:

• providing proof that your child is a citizen.

• establishing, in a form that is admissible in a state court in the case of death, divorce or dispute over the custody of your child, that this is undeniably your child.

• providing your child with a U.S. passport.

• providing your child with a social security number that is necessary to claim your child as a dependant and receive a tax credit.

• providing your child with a birth certificate recognized by schools, sports organizations and other entities which require a birth certificate; and one that can be replaced if lost.

What Do I Need to Do for an International Re-adoption?

To complete an international re-adoption, you need to complete our information sheet and send it back to us along with all of your child’s foreign adoption paperwork and your previous home study.

Once we receive your documents, our adoption team will file a petition with the court for your international re-adoption. We will then draft and send you final documents. After a review of the documents, a court date will be set. We will order a US birth certificate after the re-adoption is finalized.

The entire international re-adoption process typically takes 2 to 3 weeks from when you provide the required information.

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Sometimes people who adopt internationally want to do a recognition and this is something we can help you with.

An international re-adoption may be the only way in which your child can receive a US birth certificate or citizenship.

To learn more about international re-adoption, please contact Brown Pruitt today.