MC Law students help families seeking adoptions
America has seen child adoptions drop from 133,737 children in 2007 to 110,373 in 2014, a decrease attributed to high fees, long waiting lines and unethical practices.
Chuck Johnson, CEO of the National Council for Adoption, says 1 million families are trying to adopt at any given moment.
Mississippi College law students recently worked with families to cut through that process.
They handled stacks of legal documents and joined with families appearing before a judge to successfully adopt 17 children before the Christmas holidays.
“It is a win-win situation for everyone,” MC School of Law professor Crystal Welch, who oversees the students, said in a news release. “Our law clinic is excited to use our legal training to cement these family bonds and collectively celebrate the joy of adoption.”
The work culminated in a mass adoption ceremony before Judge Denise Sweet Owens in Hinds County Chancery Court on Dec. 12. Some family members had been seeking adoptions for up to seven years.
MC Law School students have helped families with nearly 100 adoptions since Jan. 1. The total includes 78 adoptions since June 1. The adoption clinic opened in 2004 at the Baptist-affiliated law school in Jackson.
The students receive real-time courtroom experience practicing their craft.
Family law typically sees attorneys battle in adversarial domestic situations. “But this is one area of law where everybody walks out of the courtroom happy,” Welch noted in the MC news release. “Adoption law is the most rewarding area of legal practice.”
About 59 percent of the children adopted come from the foster care system in the United States and 26 percent from other nations. Some 15 percent are voluntarily relinquished American babies, reports show. An estimated 400,000 children are in the nation’s foster care system, with at least 100,000 kids waiting to be adopted.
MC student Tiffany Strain of Madison supports the work of the law school to make a complex adoption process get a little easier.
Her mother’s friend wanted to adopt a baby in the United States, and the process lingered for about five years, Strain said in the news release. “It took forever.”