Or why some of my posts recently have been a bit terse and bitter.
My wife and I are adopting from Russia.
To do this we need to fill out a Dossier, or approximately 40+ pages of legallese. We had to go to the Sherrif's department and the FBI and get approved by all of the above.
Well we did it.
We did it all, but one little letter. There last thing we needed was a letter, on the letterhead of a bank or real-estate broker, stating our house size and that we do in fact, own it (and what our mortgage is.)
We typed it up and put it on a disk and went out to get it taken care of.
We went to the people we bought our house from and asked them to print and notarize it. They agreed. However, they did not have a computer that could read this disk.
We spent the rest of that week getting other papers organized. Since we work a hour from the real estate agents, we couldn't go running back to them until the next weekend.
The next week we went to the people from whom we bought the house. They printed and signed the paperwork.
It had to be notarized.
Well, their notary was the person who signed it. So they sent us to the local bank to get it notarized.
The next day we realized that the notarization was not complete. There is a phrase the state wants with the seal, "Signed and witnessed by..."
We took off a day of work and ran to the bank to get this notarized. Then we went the hour into downtown St. Louis, with all of our paperwork, and went to have it Apostilled.
What Apostiling means is that the secretary of State looks at the paperwork and says, "yep. They are notaries."
He rejected the Proof of Residence. The bank's notary's seal was broken and imperfect.
The next day we called the real estate agent and asked if they could redo the letter, but this time, have one of the other people sign it and then he could notarize it.
We dropped it off Monday night, but he was called away and said he would do it the next morning.
We picked it up Tuesday night, after work.
He had forgotten the "Signed and witnessed..." line.
Wednesday I went to our bank to have them do it. I showed them all the notarized loan documents showing our home and its details. They refused, saying "We are a bank. We don't know nothing about your house."
There goes my loan business from them.
We arranged to drop by the real estate office late Wed and have them do it again Thursday, this time with the forgotten line.
The disk the form was on died, mainly due to a malfunctining disk drive used when I was trying to print some needed digital photos at Walgreens.
Thursday Morning, before they opened, we dropped off a new disk.
Thursday evening we picked it up and it was perfect.
This morning, I called in late to work and ran it to the big office to have it apostilled. My wife was going to get off work early and pick it up.
She got the call instead.
The realestate agent who notarized it last had an expired stamp.
She screamed.
The people in my wifes office kicked her out of the office and told her to get this taken care of. She was driven the 20 miles to my office, got our car, and headed to the nearest real-estate office to see if they would do it.
They said no.
The next one was closed.
The third was just moving in and had no equipment to do it.
The fourth said no.
She called me crying. Were we destined to not adopt?
Finally, she went across the street to the bank, another branch from the one I went to.
She was in tears.
They agreed.
I never could have pulled off the tears.
To make a long story short, well not quite as long anyway, its done. Its all been notarized and apostilled and turned in and we are one step closer.
Thanks for letting me rant a bit. I feel much better now.
Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :
Wow. That sucks to have to go through so much.
This reminds me, we need to have a Saint Louis get together!
Posted by Suneun (Member # 3247) on :
One day your child will find that story funny. You might not, however.
Hug. Good luck on this great quest.
Posted by larisse (Member # 2221) on :
{{{{Dan_raven and Wife}}}}
Just think of this as your own form of labor. Painful, yes, but darn well worth it.
You guys are going to make wonderful parents.
Posted by Belle (Member # 2314) on :
For the love, when you get your kids in school - don't sign them in when you think they're running late.
If you guys have this kind of luck with getting one paper notarized you don't want to meet the truancy judge.
It's going to be okay. You'll have your family together soon.
Posted by ak (Member # 90) on :
This is what everyone's experience is every time they deal with government entities, or anyone like the Water Board who has a monopoly. Why? Why can't we fix this in our society?
People in communist countries, where the government runs the grocery stores and so on have the same experience when trying to buy bread. We have a better system than them. In our country it's relatively easy and painless to buy bread. Why can't we come up with a system for doing this other stuff which is similarly easy and painless? Imagine how much lost productivity this episode caused! How much did that end up costing our economy? Now multiply that by everyone who has to go through this or something similar to it when dealing with entities like that. Why must we have such wasteful, inefficient, and soul sucking systems? Why can't we fix them? I think we ought to be doing whatever it takes, whether it be civil disobedience, or voting campaigns, or whatever, to eliminate this stupidity from our country.
</soapbox>
[ February 14, 2004, 05:11 PM: Message edited by: ak ]
Posted by Kama (Member # 3022) on :
quote:People in communist countries, where the government runs the grocery stores and so on have the same experience when trying to buy bread
Come on, ak, it was never that bad. Posted by ak (Member # 90) on :
You had to wait in long lines, though, right?
Posted by Kama (Member # 3022) on :
Yeah, but it never took more than a few hours Posted by ak (Member # 90) on :
Wow, but that sucks, though.
Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
(((((Dan&MrsRaven)))))
What a traumatic experience! Just shows how much you REALLLLLY want to adopt!
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![[Group Hug]](graemlins/grouphug.gif)
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You had to wait in long lines, though, right?