Legally Official

Today we went to court and Paxton legally became ours!  We sent in for his new birth certificate and will be known as

PAXTON STEELE SORENSON!!

Some of you may not be familiar with how adoptions work and why we had to wait six months to make this legally official, so I thought I would explain it a little.  Every state has different adoption laws, so here in Utah when the birth mother signs the initial paperwork (usually in the hospital-at least 24 hours after birth) she has signed away her legal rights and if the birth father hasn't said anything by the time the birth mother signs, then his rights are relinquished.  Then LDS family services has legal rights over Paxton and during the 6 months we had him, they did 3 supervisories (2 weeks old, 3 months old and 5 months old).  This 6 month period is to make sure that Paxton is in a good place and that we are bonding with him and everything is great!  So then we go to court to finalize it all.  So this was a very exciting day for us to make it all official!

Judge Kouris and our case-worker Shantel

 

Now a little bit about today...

Going to court today I didn't know quite what to expect.  Our case-worker said that sometimes they just keep it casual and just do it in the judges office and other times your in the court room.  Well ours was in the court room and it was just like how you see it on TV.  There was the judge looking all judge-like and then our attorney who was questioning us (very easy questions to answer, things like 'Do you Mindy, think that Remington is capable of being a parent?',  'No one is influencing you or pressuring you to make this choice, you have a clear mind?',  'your at least over the age of 18 therefore 10 years older than Paxton?' and so forth) and then Shantel was sitting on one side of the room representing LDS family services and then us on the other side with  microphones to speak into.  There were also some random people there sitting in the court room.  They were people waiting to do there own cases most likely for drugs, divorce, etc.  When we were finished and walking out those people all were smiling at us, I think it was cool for them to witness that today.

I had Paxton sitting on my lap and he was being so verbal, just jabbering away and he was hitting the desk with his hands- just kept pounding it.  The Judge was actually way cool and was making jokes saying things like 'Well Paxton this is your day, so if you would like to take over go ahead'  and 'I think Paxton just might become an attorney someday' because of how talkative he was and then our attorney said 'I don't know, I'm thinking a Judge with all that hitting the desk, you just need to get him a gavel'.  Things went smoothly and after the questioning we just signed a couple of papers and that was it.  Then the Judge came down to shake our hands and we asked to get his picture, it was great!

After we left we were talking with Shantel and she said she was surprised with how cool Judge Kouris was with the jokes and letting us get a picture with him.  Just because when he first started things he seemed so formal.  It was a great experience and Paxton did awesome even though it was in the middle of his nap time.

Our attorney Dean Ellis

He is the greatest!  It was so fun for him to be our attorney since we use to live in the same ward together.  It was fun to see him and catch up.  He helped make today run smoothly and make it a great day!