My mother has a friend who is four months pregnant who wants my mom to adopt the baby. My mother hasn't told my father. How should she proceed?

Answer 1

Adoption is a big deal.

First step? Your mom needs to talk to her husband about it. Both of them need to be committed to the adoption for it to work.

Second: talk to a lawyer about setting up the adoption paperwork; this is more involved than just signing a piece of paper between your parents and the birth mom.

Third: the biological father has to be notified; if you can get his voluntary surrender of parental rights, then great. If not, that's going to be a huge problem for adoption: you can't adopt without getting that done, and the courts are very hesitant to involuntarily terminate someone's parental rights unless there's a problem.

Fourth: you need to have everyone on the same page as to birth mom's involvement with the child after the adoption happens.