Adoption Legal Answers

I am Iranian and although I now live with my wife in San Diego, I still have many family and friends in Iran. A good friend’s daughter is pregnant and very young and unmarried. It is shameful for her to be in this state given my friend’s religion and the culture in his community. My friend knows my wife and I have been trying to have a child for years and he has offered for us to adopt the baby. His daughter is agreeable. What do my wife and I need to do to adopt the baby and get it here to the U.S.? Do we need a lawyer to do this or do we work through some sort of agency? Will the child automatically be a U.S. citizen once we adopt?

For 2 years my wife and I have been fostering twin boys, age 3 through the Clark County Child Protective Services here in Las Vegas and have always planned on adopting them. The boys’ biological father has not been around the entire time the twins have been with us. We were scheduled to finalize the adoption next month and the father has reappeared and is saying he wants his kids back. He will not consent to the adoption. What chance does he have to fight the adoption if he’s never been a father to the boys, and we are the only family they’ve ever known? The social worker is telling us we may now have to go to a trial to terminate his parental rights. Do we need our own lawyer for that trial?

I was convicted of felony drug possession and distribution when I was 19 years old. I served my sentence and had a perfect record on probation. I’m now 34 years old, married, and have had no other trouble with the law whatsoever. My wife and I want to adopt a child but the worker at the Las Vegas adoption agency we met with said my felony conviction might bar me from adopting in Nevada. Is that true? Is there any way I can get the conviction off my record since it’s been so long and I have had no other convictions or legal problem at all? Could the same lawyer help me with both the adoption and clearing my record?