Adoption laws? I give best answer!?

Question

So I'm writing this story/script and have run into a roadblock. I need to know, in detail, how this scenario would work;

If the parents in England die suddenly, leaving their 2 16-year-old kids to their only relatives, which in America, how would laws and all that work? How long would it take for the kids to be adopted and to get over there? What if the relatives had no ideas of the kdis existence before the death of the parents? I give best answer!!!

Answer 1

The Americans would hire a solicitor to advise them.

Probably they would ask the UK probate court to award them guardianship and based on that, they would apply to the US Consulate in London for visas to bring the children into the US as resident aliens.

Adoption is possible, but why bother? The kids are 16, not 6.

16 is rather old - what do the two kids want to do? If they are against it, it is going to very difficult to force them to go.

If they are twins, they probably are close too - what if one wants to go and the other to stay?

Answer 2

The US isn't like the UK, the laws here vary from state to state.

Frankly, the kids would likely be adults before all the red tape is done....

Answer 3

It would be a long process and spending a long amount of time dealing with red tape isn't very dramatic. The simplest situation (for dramatic purposes) would be to have the kids be American citizens. This would be the case if they were born in the US (maybe before their parents moved to England). Actually, this is kinda the case with my cousins: they were born in CA, then, when the older one was 3 and the younger one was 1, their parents moved them the Hong Kong. They need passports (like anyone else), but if anything had happened to their parents, they could have been on a flight to the US the next day.

In any case, whether the Americans knew or not, the process would be the same...the only issue would be if the UK gov't would allow minors (although 16 is kinda borderline) to go to live with strangers when they could get taken in by the UK foster system or live with a friend's family in the UK.

Just a note: what people write in their wills about the custody of their kids is *never* just taken for granted. A judge always has to look at it and decide if it is in the kids' best interests.

Answer 4

In this event, if the relatives agreed to take custody of the children they would have to apply for immigrant visas for them.  That can take some time, though there might be a way to speed up the process in an event such as this.

Depending on English law, the 16 year olds might have a say in whether or not they want to leave their home country to go to another country and live with relatives they do not know, considering they have already been through enough tragedy with the death of their parents.

This would not be a case of adoption, though.  When parents die and leave custody of their children to someone else, they just assume legal custody-they do not adopt the children.

You can check out http://travel.state.gov for more information on visas, immigrant visas, etc.  It will probably help you a lot!