Effective April 1st, 2014, Serbia will be party to the Hague Convention on Protection of Children and Co-operation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption. Serbian adoptions started after April 1st must meet the requirements of the convention and U.S. law implementing the convention.
Doesn't Hague require adoptions to be completed with an agency?
ReplyDeleteYes, Anne, you are correct. At the moment there is one agency approved to operate in Serbia to complete adoptions to the US. They are charging $27,000.
ReplyDeleteThat's most unfortunate - we really wanted to do an independent adoption this time. I believe if we file our i600a before April 1, 2014 we *may* still be able to be "grandfathered in" for a non-Hague adoption from Serbia (and have 18 months plus one renewal to finish the adoption - we weren't quite ready to begin yet). I am going to be researching that option. We had a similar situation in 2008 when the US put the Hague in force as we were just beginning our Colombian adoption. We filed our i600a with USCIS the week before Hague went into effect and we were able to adopt from Colombia sans Hague (but we still used an agency).
ReplyDeleteIt is at the discretion of the Serbian MLSP weather or not they will grandfather you in. You will need to contact them ASAP to find that out.
ReplyDeleteAlso good to know... thanks. Would you email me their contact information? amverhulst at yahoo dot com - Thanks!
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