What should I look for first?
The first thing you need to find out is if you were adopted from a Hague Adoption Convention Country or not. You can check the U.S. list of countries to determine if your native country is part of the convention.

What is the difference between a Hague Adoption Convention Country and not?
The only way to enter the U.S. legally from a Non-Hague Adoption Convention Country is to be considered an orphan. Adoptees from Hague Adoption Convention Country do not have to be considered orphaned to enter legally.

What forms can I look for?
Hague Adoption Convention

• I-800 Petition – This petition asks the child be considered a relative.
• I-800A Petition – This form asks the child to be considered eligible for adoption.
• INA – The Immigration and Nationality Act requires all children from Hague Adoption Convention to go through this process.

Non- Hague Adoption Convention

• I-600 – This is similar to I-800 and classifies the child as an immediate relative.
• I-600A – This form declares the child an orphan and eligible for adoption under orphan status.

How do I know if I was adopted from a Hague Adoption Convention Country or Not?
There are 77 countries involved in the convention. You can find a complete list of countries by checking the U.S. list of countries. There you can check the county from which you were born to see if it is a part of the convention.

Is there any other way to be adopted from another country?
Since every country has different laws, it is possible to be adopted in a different manner. However, you cannot enter this country legally through any other manner. This is why adoptive parents are advised to seek out these forms first. Otherwise, while they can adopt the child, they will not be able to bring the child into the country.

How do I finding Court and Adoption Records
You can quickly and easily search through U.S. records online. The online database will be able to sort through the adoption info and give you the information you are searching for.

Beginning the search without adoption records
There are many reasons you may not have adoption records. Your family may not want you to have them. They could have been destroyed. Or, like my friends, her adopted parents passed away at an early age and no one knows where they are. This does not prevent you from searching.

Begin by writing everything down you do know.

• Day, place and possible hospital you were born
• Write down all the information you can collect from people around you. Names, numbers, ages, birthdates, cities, states and any other piece of information they can remember about the adoption and the birth parents.

Beginning your search online
The more information you have before you begin searching online, the better. While you can search with just a name or just a date, you will have much better luck narrowing down your search if you have more information. Therefore, try to squeeze out every bit of information you can from friends and family before you begin your online search.

When searching Adoption Records you may find

• Possible parent name
• Background information on birth parents

Searching Divorce Records of the birth parents name may reveal:

• Children from the marriage
• Other names for the birth mother

Searching through Marriage Records  can reveal:

• Full Names of Birth Parents
• Attending priest (who may know the birth parents)
• Names of Bride and Groom’s Parents (Your birth grandparents)

Searching Death Records  can reveal

• Names of living relatives
• Date and Cause of death

Searching through Vital Records may reveal:

• Birth records
• Death Records
• Marriage Records
• Divorce Records
• Adoption Records
• Phone Numbers and Address

If you are searching for your birth family or if you know someone searching for his or her birth family, we can help. Use the child adoption information databases and start finding those you are looking for. The answers to all your questions are out there waiting to be solved. You only need to start looking.

Finding People is NOT as Easy as the Movies
We may have been a little naïve to think, that we could walk into some Humphrey Bogart office and hire a private eye to find a friend’s biological mom. We thought we could give him my friend’s name and birth date and he would come back a few days later with a name and phone number. I was wrong.

I called several places and basically got laughed at. Some were kinder than others were, but they all told me that unless I had the birth mother’s name, I was flat out of luck. Frankly, I thought that if I had the birth mother’s name I wouldn’t need them. Even so, they said it would cost a lot to find her with no information.

Time to Get Sneaky Myself
At this point, we decided we had to be our own private eye to find the birth parents. This meant that I began by questioning all my friend’s family members. Unfortunately, no one could remember the birth mother’s last name. Although, they did remember her first name, which we will call “Kim.”

We also found some more useful information when an aunt remembered that “Kim’s” birthday was two days after a cousin of ours. That meant that Kim was born on July 16. We did not have a year but this was helpful.

Searching Online for Birth Records
We went online and read articles. That is when I found out about asking for non-identifying information from the adoption agency. There we discovered that the birth parents were from Farmersville, Texas. This was huge since it is such a small town.

It also told us that she was 17 at the time of adoption. That meant we now knew the year she was born. Kim was born July 16, 1962.

When we did a birth records search online, we found only one Kim born on July 16 in Greenville, Texas. (Greenville is the city you would be born in if you were from Farmersville.) We had a first and last name. We did a quick people search and voila we had a number. We found her birth mother!

It really is that simple to find birth parents. No need to pay an expensive detective and sort through dusty old books. You can do the research yourself and find everything you need. Start looking today and you just might find who you are looking for tonight.

If you are one of these people searching for someone you lost in the adoption process, there are steps you can take to help you reunite.

Step 1: Begin with the Adoption Information that You Already Have
Write down everything you know about yourself and the adoption. Include when you were born, the hospital, the agency that handled the adoption and anything you can think of that might be useful.

Step 2: Go to Your Adoptive Parents
They may have more information than you may think. Write it all down, no matter how useless you may think it is. This is also the time to approach other relatives, as they may hold clues to your biological parents as well.

Step 3: Petition the Agency for Non-Identifying Information
The non-identifying information will tell you all kinds of stuff about your biological family.

• It should let you know if they are living or dead.
• How old they were when you were born.
• How many other children they had when you were born.
• The ethnicity of your biological parents
• Possible reasons why they gave you up for adoption
• Medical History
• Religion
• Possible Geographic Location

Step 4: Begin Gathering Documents
This is the time to start your online search. You can go online and search court records, birth records, adoptive records, and even do people searches. It is fast and easy. You can turn up quite a bit of information in a very short amount of time.

This will be your best shot at actually contacting your biological parents. Once you begin the online search, things start coming together fast. So brace yourself for what happens when you are ready to find birth parents.

Step 5: Register with State and National Agencies
Sometimes, the files are locked up so tight you cannot find information. However, starting in the 1990s, adoption cases became more open as women wanted to become more involved. This is good news for adoptive children as they are easier to located.

In any case, if you are looking and cannot find anything you need to register with state and national reunion registries. One of the best reunion registries to date is the International Soundex Reunion Registry ISRR.

Parents and children register hoping that the other will register and they can be reunited. While it is a long shot, if you register and your parent registers, then can reunite with your birth parents.