Metro Detroit families celebrate Michigan Adoption Day with 8 adoptions at Third Circuit Court

It was a long path for eight children who finalized their adoptions on Michigan Adoption Day, but on Friday the new families made it official. 

"It gives me no better joy today to tell you that this adoption is hereby finalized," said Judge Karen Braxton of the Third Circuit Court. 

Braxton, who oversees many of the cases, said each adoption timeline is different, but on average it can take about two years from start to finish. 

"We do Adoption Day because we want to celebrate everything that our families have gotten to get to this day," Braxton said. "It takes forever — how many days they've waited, or years sometimes, how much paperwork they've had to do, how many times somebody has had to go into their home, so it's really important to me when they've waited years that we take time out to celebrate them." 

Loretta Duncan-Brantley, who finalized the adoption of her son Silas on Friday, said she's been in the adoption process for well over a year. 

"I was his guardian, so a guardianship adoption is completely different, and it has been — when she said how much paperwork … but it's been so worth it. It's so worth it I would do it all over again," Duncan-Brantley said.

Multiple kinds of adoptions were finalized on Friday: a guardianship adoption, infant adoptions, and even a stepparent adoption. Braxton says there are many difficult days in the juvenile division. 

"We do a lot of hard work in the juvenile section; we deal with termination of parental rights and children who are getting in trouble, but what keeps you going are days like today when we get to celebrate and see all the tears of joy," Braxton said.