Going through the process of adoption involves a lot of paperwork, so if you are not an organized person, you might struggle a little with keeping it all together. You do not want to have to end up searching every corner of your house looking for an important piece of adoption paperwork. If you are able to find a method to keep yourself and the adoption paperwork organized, you will be able to reduce your stress and ensure you always have what you need when you need it.
Organizing Your Paperwork
There are a few different ways to organize your adoption paperwork. The first step in doing this is by ensuring that you make extra copies of everything. The paperwork is going to be going back and forth between you and the adoption agencies so it is important that you have your own copies of these papers.
You want to make sure nothing gets lost, and one way to do this is by making copies of the paperwork. Once the copies are made, then make sure you have a safe place to store them. This can either be in a binder with tabs that are labelled or in a file folder. Each document should be sorted into the section that it identifies with. How you name each section is entirely up to you, just make sure it is in a way that you can understand and find papers easily. You might consider sorting them by month, purpose, or where it was sent to or from.
Another option would be to scan the documents onto your computer. If you chose to go with this method, then make sure you label each document accurately and clearly. Then keep all of these documents in the same folder. You can then back all of this up online in case something happens to your hard drive.
Organization Options
As you work to organize your paperwork, there are several ways to divide it up. Below are some of the categories you might consider to make it easy to find the paperwork you need in the future.
Adoption Agency: This is where you can keep general information about the agency, a copy of your adoption application, and a copy of your adoptive family profile. Here is where you can also keep copies of all the other paperwork you have filled out with the agency.
Finances: The paperwork that will go into this section is a record of anything you spend in relation to the adoption. This could be information on the adoption fees and fees that relate to the birth mother as well. It is important to keep this section organized for yourself, but also for any tax purposes.
Birth Parent Information: This should include all the birth parents you have connected with. You should also put here any communication you have between each of the birth parents. If the communication is online, then print out copies to keep for your records.
Adoption Finalization: The legal finalization of the adoption has a lot of paperwork as well. In this section you can put copies of all the legal documents you receive from court, your child’s birth certificate, and your child’s medical insurance. Any other paperwork you receive from the agency in regards to the finalization of the adoption will go here as well.
