Going to your local court is recommended where you can get a Petition for Adoption and Affidavit for the Petitioner for the Adoption. You will need a certified long form copy of child’s birth certificate and you can obtain this from the Registry of Vital Records from the city or town the child was born. […]

Even famous people like Prince did not have a Will. The idea behind a Will is that the role in getting your assets or your estate to the people at the right time and also at times deals with the tax rate. If you die without a Will, it means that you die intestate and […]

Sometimes DCF will get parents to agree to a safety plan with a variety of tasks and a plan that the parents are asked to do. The parents can be forced to agree to placing their children outside of the home and many other provisions without necessarily fully understanding them. It can end up later […]

Sometimes I get questions about what a DCF Assessment is. Usually what that means is a 45-day family assessment. That is the point where the Department of Children and Families (“DCF”) is involved for one or a couple of reasons. First, is that you might have signed up for voluntary services with DCF. Second, if […]

The Lamb Warning is different than the Miranda Warning. It is in the case Commonwealth vs. Lamb that occurred in the 1970’s. It lets the person being interviewed know that the information that he or she is providing to the person asking the questions is not confidential and it would be shared with the court. […]

In many times if parties have been before the Court, they might have heard “ICWA”, which stands for the “Indian Child Welfare Act”. It has been in effect since 1978 and active at congress protecting Native American children.  It is regarding federally recognized Native American tribes.  There are additional protections for placement of Native Americans […]

In care & protection cases, the court appoints something called a “Court Investigator”, which is very similar to a “Guardian ad Litem” in Probate Court. The Judge tries to get as much relative information from an impartial source that might not otherwise be presented by any of the parties in the case. The Court Investigator […]

First, one of the analogies I like is: if you ask a barber if you need a haircut, he’s always going to say “yes”. So, if you ask an attorney whether you need an attorney, he’s probably going to say “yes”. But, DCF is involved, I’d strongly recommend hiring an attorney. Every case with DCF […]

It is a question and answer session. It is not the same as a regular conversation that you would be having. There generally will be a question and you can take a moment to think about the question, then answer it. It should not feel like a normal conversation, you want to make sure you […]

DCF is prohibited from a Disability Based Discrimination; which includes denial of opportunities to benefit different services and failure to reasonably modify its policies procedures and imposing methods of administration that have the effect of discriminating on the basis of disability. There has been found, including public letters by the US Department of Justice and […]