Understanding the process...

DNA: This is a US requirement to insure the woman who has made the adoption plan is indeed the mother who gave birth to the baby. Although the birth mom signs off on the adoption 4 times, this is the only time she is required to see her child while the process moved ahead.

Pre-Approval (PA): Again, a US requirement. This is where the US reviews our case and issues PA, this simply means they intend to issue the child a visa to enter the US upon the finalization of our adoption. This process used to take 30 days, but is currently running about 55 days !

Family Court (FC): After the referral the adoptive parents must sign a power of attorney so that the attorney can act on our behalf in Guatemala. Once the POA is registered, the dossier is translated into Spanish and the case enters into Family Court. During the Family Court stage, a social worker is assigned the case. The social worker reviews the dossier, interviews the birth mother, and sees the child. The social worker then writes a several page report summarizing the facts of the case and attesting to the reasons that the birth mother cannot care for her child. FC generally happens simultaneously as DNA and in most cases will exit FC before PA is issued.

Procuraduria General de la Nacion (PGN): PGN is equivalent to our Attorney General's office. A PGN Attorney will look at the documents and can reject them based on notarization, mis-spellings, smudges, cross-outs, etc...These errors also known as "previos" can be in the dossier provided by the adoptive family or the Guatemalan documents provided by the lawyer. If there are any problems, PGN will issue a Kick Out (KO) and request the documents be corrected. One of the requirements to get through PGN is DNA and PA. Often lawyers will submit a case to PGN w/out PA so you will receive a KO, their hope is to also find out what other previo's need to be fixed. You will get KO at least once and sometimes more...some feel this to show that they are scrutinizing our cases other think it is because some PGN Attorneys are against international adoption. Each time you enter PGN you can be in for 6-8 weeks and sometimes longer. Once you exit PGN, the birth mother signs off for the last time, and the child legally becomes yours !
There are a few more steps after PGN before you are able to travel and pick-up your child, they can take up to 4 weeks... we'll get into those steps once we get the call "YOU'RE OUT" !