Creating or expanding your family through adoption is a deeply personal journey filled with both profound rewards and unique challenges. As experienced family law attorneys, we’ve guided countless Texans through this life-changing process, witnessing firsthand the joy that comes when families are built through love and intention.
This comprehensive guide illuminates the various pathways to adoption in Texas, helping you navigate each step with confidence and clarity.
Finding Your Adoption Path: Understanding Your Options
Texas offers multiple routes to adoption, each designed to serve different situations and preferences. Your personal circumstances, values, and vision for your family will guide which path feels most appropriate.
Foster-to-Adopt: Opening Your Heart and Home
The Texas foster care system currently has thousands of children needing permanent homes. This path typically begins with becoming a licensed foster parent through the Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS), potentially leading to adoption if the child becomes legally free for adoption.
Foster-to-adopt represents the most affordable adoption option, with minimal out-of-pocket expenses. The state generally covers home study costs, legal fees, and provides post-adoption subsidies for many children. Our CPS defense attorneys help families navigate this system with compassion and expertise.
This path requires openness to older children, sibling groups, or children with specific needs. While the initial goal remains family reunification, many foster parents eventually become adoptive parents when reunification isn’t possible.
Infant Adoption: Working with Agencies or Attorneys
For families specifically hoping to adopt newborns or infants, private adoption through agencies or attorneys offers a direct path. These adoptions typically involve expectant mothers selecting adoptive families before birth, though the final consent cannot be given until after the baby is born.
Agency adoptions provide comprehensive services including counseling for birth mothers, matching services, and post-adoption support. Attorney-facilitated independent adoptions may offer more direct involvement in finding potential birth mothers through networking and advertising.
These adoptions typically range from $25,000-$50,000, covering services, legal fees, birth mother expenses, and other costs. While more expensive than foster adoption, grants, tax credits, and loans can help manage these expenses.
Our Houston adoption attorneys guide families through every aspect of private adoption, ensuring all legal requirements are met while providing emotional support throughout the process.
Stepparent Adoption: Legally Recognizing Family Bonds
When a stepparent wishes to legally adopt their spouse’s child, Texas law provides a streamlined process that typically costs between $1,500-$5,000. These adoptions require terminating the parental rights of one biological parent, either through consent or court order when grounds for termination exist.
The process includes background checks and may involve a simplified home study, though courts often waive this requirement in stepparent cases. For children 12 or older, their consent to the adoption becomes necessary as well.
Our family law attorneys handle numerous stepparent adoptions each year, helping formalize the loving relationships that already exist while providing the legal protections children deserve.
Relative or Kinship Adoption: Keeping Family Connections
When grandparents, aunts, uncles, or other relatives adopt children from within their family, Texas law provides certain accommodations that can simplify the process. These adoptions maintain important family connections while providing legal permanence.
Like stepparent adoptions, relative adoptions require addressing the parents’ legal rights and typically cost between $1,500-$5,000. Home studies may be modified or waived depending on circumstances and county practices.
The Law Office of Bryan Fagan has extensive experience with kinship adoptions, helping extended families create stable, loving homes for children while preserving important family bonds.
International Adoption: Building Families Across Borders
Adopting a child from another country involves navigating both U.S. immigration requirements and the laws of the child’s birth country. These adoptions typically range from $35,000-$60,000 and involve extensive paperwork, international travel, and additional post-adoption requirements.
After bringing your child home, you’ll complete a “re-adoption” process in Texas to obtain a U.S. birth certificate and ensure the adoption’s recognition under state law. Our adoption attorneys guide families through both international requirements and the Texas re-adoption process.
While international adoption has become more complex in recent years with changing policies in many countries, it remains a meaningful path for many Texas families.
The Adoption Process: Step by Step
While specific procedures vary by adoption type, most Texas adoptions follow these general steps:
1. Reflection and Education
Begin with honest self-assessment about your motivations, preferences, and readiness for adoption. Research different types of adoption, attend information sessions, and connect with adoptive parent groups to gain realistic perspectives.
2. Home Study: Opening Your Home and Heart
All adoptions require a home study conducted by a licensed social worker or agency. This process typically includes:
- Home inspection ensuring basic safety standards
- Interviews with all family members
- Review of financial records, employment verification, and references
- Criminal background checks and child abuse registry checks
- Medical statements verifying basic health
- Autobiographical statements and parenting philosophy discussions
Rather than viewing the home study as an evaluation to “pass,” consider it preparation for the journey ahead. Our attorneys help clients navigate this process efficiently while addressing any concerns that arise.
3. Finding a Match: Different Paths to Connection
How you connect with a child varies by adoption type:
Foster-to-Adopt: You’ll work with caseworkers who identify children whose needs match your family’s capabilities. Foster placements may or may not lead to adoption depending on the case’s legal outcome.
Infant Adoption: You’ll create a profile for potential birth mothers to review. This process may involve waiting for selection or actively networking to connect with expectant mothers considering adoption.
Stepparent/Relative Adoption: The connection already exists; the legal process formalizes this relationship.
International Adoption: You’ll work with agencies specializing in specific countries, reviewing profiles of waiting children or being matched based on your preferences and eligibility.
4. Legal Procedures: Ensuring Permanent Families
The legal process varies by adoption type but generally includes:
- Filing an adoption petition with the appropriate court
- Addressing biological parents’ rights through consent or termination proceedings
- Post-placement supervision period (typically 6+ months)
- Finalization hearing before a judge
- Amended birth certificate issuance
Our adoption attorneys guide clients through each legal step, ensuring all requirements are met while minimizing stress during this emotional time.
Financial Considerations and Resources
Adoption costs vary significantly by type:
- Foster-to-Adopt: $0-$2,500
- Stepparent/Relative Adoption: $1,500-$5,000
- Domestic Infant Adoption: $25,000-$50,000
- International Adoption: $35,000-$60,000
Several resources can help manage these expenses:
- Federal Adoption Tax Credit (approximately $16,180 in 2025)
- Employer adoption benefits (many Texas companies offer $5,000-$15,000)
- Adoption grants from organizations like HelpUsAdopt.org and Gift of Adoption
- Low-interest adoption loans
- Foster adoption subsidies for eligible children
Our team at the Law Office of Bryan Fagan helps families understand available resources and create realistic financial plans for their adoption journey.
Legal Considerations Unique to Texas
Texas adoption law has several important provisions that affect the process:
- Birth mothers cannot provide consent until at least 48 hours after birth
- Birth fathers can sign relinquishment before birth, but must register with the Paternity Registry within 31 days to preserve rights if not married to the mother
- Interstate adoptions require compliance with the Interstate Compact on the Placement of Children (ICPC)
- Post-adoption contact agreements are not legally enforceable but can provide valuable guidance for ongoing relationships
- Home study requirements may be modified or waived in stepparent and certain relative adoptions
- Children 12 or older must consent to their adoption
Understanding these legal nuances helps avoid complications during the adoption process. Our attorneys stay current with evolving adoption laws to provide the most accurate guidance for our clients.
Emotional Preparation and Support
The adoption journey involves unique emotional aspects that benefit from preparation and support:
For Parent-Child Attachment: Learn about attachment theory and strategies for building secure bonds, particularly important for children who have experienced trauma or multiple caregivers.
For Birth Family Relationships: Develop healthy perspectives on birth families and openness. Even in closed adoptions, children benefit from respectful, honest discussion about their origins.
For Community Understanding: Prepare responses for well-meaning but sometimes insensitive questions from others about your family’s formation.
For Identity Development: Gather resources to help your child develop a positive identity that incorporates both their adoption story and their racial/cultural heritage if different from yours.
After Finalization: The Lifelong Journey
Adoption finalization marks a legal milestone, but the adoption journey continues throughout life. Consider these ongoing aspects:
Age-Appropriate Discussions: Children’s understanding of adoption evolves as they develop. Be prepared for different questions and emotions at various developmental stages.
Access to Resources: Connect with adoption-competent therapists, support groups, and educational resources as needed throughout your child’s development.
Cultural Connections: For transracial or transcultural adoptions, maintain meaningful connections to your child’s heritage through relationships, cultural activities, and education.
Birth Family Contact: Navigate ongoing relationships with birth families with flexibility, respect, and focus on your child’s best interests.
Begin Your Adoption Journey
If you’re ready to take the first steps toward adoption, the Law Office of Bryan Fagan offers expert guidance tailored to your specific situation. We provide comprehensive legal representation while addressing the emotional aspects of growing your family through adoption.
Contact our office for a consultation to discuss your adoption goals and develop a plan that aligns with your family’s vision. We’ll help you navigate each step of this meaningful journey with confidence and support.
Bryan Fagan is a Texas family law attorney with a heart for adoption—inspired not just by his legal career, but by his own family story. Growing up in Atascocita with two adopted brothers, Bryan learned early the profound meaning of chosen family. His passion for justice was sparked by John Grisham’s The Pelican Brief, and he became the first lawyer in his family, balancing night classes at South Texas College of Law while caring for his grandmother with Alzheimer’s.
Today, Bryan brings that same dedication to his practice, guiding families through adoptions, custody disputes, divorces, and complex marital agreements. A certified member of the College of the State Bar of Texas, he combines elite legal expertise with genuine empathy—drawing from his roles as a husband, father of three, and advocate for families facing false CPS allegations.
Based in Houston, Bryan is actively involved in the Houston Bar Association’s Family Law Sector and statewide family law organizations. Whether finalizing an adoption or protecting parental rights, he believes the law should reflect the deepest values of home, commitment, and love.