Upcoming Court Closures

A few days ago, I came across this bit of information for prospective adoptive parents, on the website of Bethany Christian Services, an adoption agency in the U.S. that often posts helpful information.  It's good to know when the court closures are scheduled for; I also found it interesting that Bethany has been able to advocate successfully for a joint court date for both adoptive and birth parents.  That would be very helpful in reducing our wait time, if we're able to do the same.

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We received confirmation today that the Ethiopian Court will officially be closed from August 6th - September 27, re-opening on September 28. Please be assured that our Ethiopia team will continue to work their hardest to get as many families as possible "in" before the court closes in August. As we stated in a previous blog entry, we will let families know when we have "applied" for their court date. As also stated, the court had originally proposed that birth families and adoptive families have separate court dates (with the adoptive family court date being scheduled for 1-2 months AFTER the birth family date) - however our team has been successful in advocating with the judge that she allow both the birth family and adoptive family to be seen on the same day (thus decreasing the wait time for our adoptive families). However, families MUST BE very aware that they can have NO contact with the birth family during their court trip - this would negatively impact the future of the judge allowing us to have adoptive families come at the same time as the birth family and would result in adoptive families having to wait an additional 1-2 months after the birth family court date for their court date. Please take not of this as it's critically important that all families comply with this regulation.