International Adoption Educational Courses

Doemsticating an International Adoption in South Carolina

If you would like to see this webinar offered soon, please contact the presenter, Laura Godwin (laurag@nightlight.org), Director of Nightlight's South Carolina office.

If you are a South Carolina resident and have adopted your child internationally and your child is not already a U.S. citizen, you will want to either domesticate your child's adoption or readopt your child. In addition to securing U.S. citizenship, domestication or readoption will provide your child with a Certificate of Foreign Birth from Vital Records in SC.

If your child came home on an IR-4 Visa (because he was not seen by both you and your spouse before his adoption), then your child did not automatically become a U.S. citizen when you brought him home. To secure U.S. citizenship, you must domesticate his adoption readopt him.

Domestication (like readoption) also provides for legally changing your child's name.

This webinar course covers the procedure to file the Domestication of a Foreign Adoption on your own. If you were to use an attorney's services to help you domesticate an adoption, you will generally pay $1,000 to $1,500 in legal fees, plus the court filing fee. If you choose to domesticate your child's adoption on your own, there is only the court filing fee of $150.

In this webinar, we discuss how to complete the court forms, how to file them, what supporting documents you need, and the name and contact person for your clerk of court. Also, we will share what you need to do to obtain a Certificate of Foreign Birth for your child once the adoption is domesticated.

The forms will also be emailed to you under separate cover so that you can easily complete them.

If you do not have your child's Certificate of Citizenship, we will send you the Immigration forms to complete this and answer questions you may have regarding the forms.

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Nightlight Christian Adoptions is a non-profit, 501(c)(3) adoption agency, licensed by the states of California, Colorado and South Carolina to provide adoption services, and is Hague Accredited through COA. Nightlight can perform adoption homestudies for residents of Colorado, South Carolina and Southern California (Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Diego, and Ventura counties).