San Francisco Adoption Lawyers Assisting Diverse Families

Married couples, single people and gay men and lesbians have adopted children, and all can do so legally and easily in California. We have a great amount of experience with matching all these adoptive parents with the right birth parents and baby. Particularly for lesbian and gay parents, an experienced attorney’s advice is critical. If you want a child in your home, we can help you become a parent, and while no adoption professional can guarantee you a child, we guarantee that you will have our utmost attention and efforts toward your goal.

Families of All Kinds

At the Adoption Law Offices of Adams & Romer, we regularly place newborn babies with all kinds of families: traditional husband and wife couples, gay and lesbian couples, and straight or gay single men and women. What's important is that the adoptive family be able to provide the love, care and support of a child, not that the family fits a particular label. It's always the expectant parents' decision as to which family they meet and ultimately select.

Find out more about non-traditional families.

"Your marital status or sexual orientation poses no barrier to open adoption. Just like any other factor of adoptive parents — age, race, religion — birth parents are seeking all sorts of families for their child. The key is to be open, honest and comfortable in talking about who you are."
— Attorney Susan Romer

Trans-Racial Adoption

When you are building your family, you may be thinking about adopting a child with a different ethnic background than your own. At Adams & Romer, we have the experience to help you successfully build a loving family in this way.

Learn more about trans-racial adoption.

We Help You Find Your Child

As an adopting parent, you become actively involved in the search for your child. You will meet or speak directly with the pregnant women who are planning an adoption to learn about who they are and to better understand their adoption desires, plans and backgrounds, including medical and social histories. At the same time, an expectant mother will get to know you and gain the confidence that you are the right person to raise her child. Many adoptive parents are surprised to find out that expectant mothers and fathers seek out and place their child with all different kinds of families.

In a private domestic adoption, a child will be placed in your home usually at birth. We will continue to work with you through the post-placement period to the finalization of your adoption. We will also help you decide before the baby is born what kind of contact you would like to have with the birth mother after the adoption is complete. Such contact can include photos, phone calls, e-mails, visits, and is worked out with the birth mother ahead of time. Learn more about future contact agreements.

Why Do I Need a Lawyer?

Adoption has a unique set of social, developmental and emotional issues in addition to the legal issues. Competent and caring attorneys, and other professionals at Adams & Romer will guide you through the entire legal and emotional process, culminating in a court decree declaring you to be the child’s legal parents.

In addition to helping you find desirable birth parents, we will help you work with them successfully, pay birth parent expenses through our attorney trust account, recommend competent counselors and guide you and your birth parents through the social service or agency process. We will arrange to terminate the birth parents’ rights. If the birth mother is from another state, we will help you resolve all interstate issues under the Interstate Compact for Placement of Children (ICPC). Our law office will make your adoption safe, sound, ethical, and legal.

The adoption law of California and other states constantly changes. At Adams & Romer, we deal daily with the issues and are committed to keeping up with the changes and nuances in the law that may affect your adoption.

Contact Adams & Romer to learn more: Call toll free 1-800-U-ADOPT-US

Whether you are husband and wife, single, gay or lesbian, we can help you with your:

• Newborn adoption
• Domestic partner/stepparent adoption
• Adoption of a relative or of an adult
• U.S. re-adoption following international adoption
• Guardianships
• Embryo adoptions