New Regulations for China adoptions

I don't have much time to post, but those of you who aren't involved in your own adoption might be interested to know this. The CCAA the governmental agency responsible for adoptions in China had a BIG meeting on December 8th and came up with the following regulations to lower the numbers of dossiers that prospective adoptive parents are sending in. Supposedly they have/are getting twice the number of dossiers than they have paper-ready children. They do have other children, but for some reason they aren't ready to adopt.

The New Regulations

Married couples only. No singles. Agencies may continue to submit singles dossiers within their 8% constraints until May 1, 2007 and then the CCAA will not accept any more single dossiers.
Married couples must be married over 2 years if there are no previous marriages. If there are previous marriages then the present marriage must be over 5 years. However, no more than two previous marriages will be allowed (it is unclear if this is two per person or two per couple)

Each parent must be 30 to 50 years old. No parent can be outside of this range. Upper limit can be 55 for a family in the waiting child program (and that “can be” kind of looks like it’s going to be on a case by case basis, not an absolute, but it’s hard to tell).

The CCAA wants healthy parents - no infectious disease, no mental disease (including depression or anxiety), no blindness, and no serious disease or disability. There is a note about waiting to see what the CCAA’s formal notice says, which sounds to me like they hope there will be more information in the formal notice about these things. There is another note that cancer was not specifically mentioned.

Both parents must have a BMI under 40.

At least one parent must have a stable job. Income requirement is $10,000 per family member including the child to be adopted. Family’s net assets must be over $80,000.

Each parent must have a high school education or higher.

No more than five children in the home including the child to be adopted. The youngest child in the home must be over 1 year old. Exceptions will be considered for the waiting child program.

No criminal record. There is a note about the CCAA not elaborating so we will again have to wait to see what the formal notice says.

The CCAA fees are also changing - going from $410 to $620

Well, we meet almost all these new requirements, except if there is a previous marriage, one must be married 5 years. Although, Kevin divorced in 92 and did not marry until after 11 years, we still need to meet the 5 year requirement and have only been married since September 2003. Therefore, after speaking to our agency, they recommended that we change countries; although the new rules don't go into effect until May 1, 2007 with all the things that must be done and all the governmental agencies involved, there is a very high chance that we wouln't beat the deadline, especially since our agency wants all dossiers in by April 1st, so they have enough time to check them and get them to China. So, we have decided to switch countries. We will love a child no matter what country. I am suppose to get a call from our agency's adoption consultant from the country we have chosen, but that means you will have to wait until I talk to them, before I let you in on what country it will be. Stay tuned for more information.