The Dossier - General Info

-The dossier is a set of documents that usually require several months of paperwork chasing. It is important to note that the documents contained in the dossier are all dated, notarized, and apostilled. The documents will only be accepted by the Ukrainian government – SDA – if the dates are less than 6 months old. The SDA does not do any business during the months of November through January. Your dossier can not be submitted during this time of the year. KEEP THIS IN MIND FOR TIMING YOUR PAPERWORK DATES!

-A good time of year to begin your dossier paperwork is in Januray as by the time the dossier is submitted the paperwork will not be outdated and there will not be the winter break in the way of keeping your dossier’s paperwork current.

-Your homestudy is included in your dossier. This usually takes several months to complete.  Consider timing the completion of your homestudy for the end of January.  It may take you 3 months to complete your portion of the homestudy- classes, auto biography, paperwork chasing, I-600A form, references.  Keep in mind that even when you are finished with your portion of the homestudy, the agents can be backlogged sometimes up to 3-6 months. It is important to interview several homestudy agents and find out how backlogged they are when choosing an agent.  During our adoption, because our agent was so backlogged, he unnecessarily added  a total of 8 months to our process- that is because when he finished the homestudy it landed us into November, so we had to wait until January then have the homestudy updated and redone, and he was very slow and it took an additional month to hear back from him that he completed the revisions.  A good, speedy agent is well worth it!

-On all dossier documents the first and last name must match. It is wise to have the documents match the exact spelling and wording of the way your name is printed on your passports.

-The notary can not make a mistake.  We had a notary accidentally write 2011, but wrote over the “1” to make it a “2”. This will not be accepted by the SDA, prepare to bring multiple copies of each document to the notary in case they make an error.  They will usually be going so fast going through the piles of papers, that they will make mistakes. You must double check each paper to make sure it is acceptable.  Another example is if they cross out a mistake and then write above the correct word next to it.  We lived in King county, but the notary wrote “Ko”, then crossed it out, and wrote next to the error “King”- this is not acceptable, it must be perfect the first time.