Okay, so my sister is pregnant, and wants to give her child to myself and my husband. We are a low income family, and my husband has a felony conviction from 19 years ago. For these two reasons we are very worried about filing for adoption, mainly fear of being denied. Since it is a relative adoption, can we file our own papers and avoid the in-home visit and background check? If we can't, could we just have a notarized letter stating that we have legal guardianship of the child, or do we have to go through the courts for that as well? Any help would be greatly appreciated.