Why is adoption so expensive? Need insights.

[HFClassicalAcademy]

We would love to adopt a baby/toddler girl one day. I've been doing research and all the costs add up to a lot of money!! DH and I can't imagine why legal costs and such are so high.

 

Is it possible to adopt for less? Maybe out of the foster care system? Anyone with experience that could shed some light on this for me would be appreciated!

It is so sad that money always has to be such a big issue. It's like, "Hey! How about instead of paying $25,000 in legal fees, I save that money to pay for the baby's college?"

 

Thanks!

Liz in NC

[Haiku]

Adopting through foster care is free, but most babies and toddlers who are available for adoption are adopted by their foster parents.

 

International adoption is expensive because the agencies have to pay their staff, you have to pay for the government to process your paperwork, the country you are adopting from has to pay its adoption officials, and, in many countries, the agencies run the orphanages and have to pay for them.

 

Private adoptions in the US are expensive because you are paying for an attorney's time, and sometimes people pay medical and living expenses for the pregnant woman.

 

It is a shame that the high cost of adoption keeps away many potentially excellent adoptive families. The government provides a tax credit in the neighborhood of $10,000, but it is still difficult to come up with the money up front. We have adopted twice and, as much as we would like to again, the financial burden of paying for the adoptions makes it not feasible for us. We could get the money, yes, but the stress of acquiring it is too much for us, and we don't like living under debt while we wait for the tax credit money to roll in (over a period of five years).

 

Tara

[jplain]

We considered international adoption, and after researching it, the fees made a lot of sense for the country we were considering. But it has been a few years, and now I'm leaning more toward adopting from the foster system.

 

Adopting through the foster system is generally low cost. Check with your employer; some offer adoption assistance in the form of reimbursement of approved expenses. There are also tax credits available for approved adoption expenses, up to a certain dollar amount.

 

If you want to go through the foster system, you'll want to pursue certification as foster parents first. Along the way, you'll be able to specify what kind of placements you are willing to take.

 

Remember that the goal of the foster system is reunification with parents or extended family, so most children in the foster system are not legally free for adoption, at least not yet. However, there are times when even though parental rights have not been severed, reunification is unlikely and there are no relatives who are eligible to adopt. In that situation, the state will try to place the child with a family whose intention is to adopt the child. This is often called "legal risk" adoption. In other cases, parental rights have already been severed, and the child is legally free for adoption.

 

Good luck with thinking through all the options. I know it is overwhelming. Just take your time! If you haven't already, it might be helpful to attend the presentations of local adoption agencies as well as the foster care organization.

[blessed2fosteradopt]

Although it is not for the faint of heart and not always a sure thing, fostering is a wonderful way to add to your family. We will be completing our second adoption on Nov. 15. We have had our son since he was six days old and our daughter came to us at 4 weeks old and we adopted her on July 17th of this year. Both are now two. The cost to adopt for us has been zero. We are completely reimbursed by the state (Florida). Also, our children will be provided with a 4 year FL state college education, a monthly stipend until they are 18 and Medicaid until they are 18. We never intended to adopt but we fell in love with our two and when the opportunity presented itself, we eagerly accepted.

 

If you have any questions about fostering, please feel free to pm me. Best of luck to you in your quest to add to your family through adoption.

[Ferdie]

Although it is not for the faint of heart and not always a sure thing, fostering is a wonderful way to add to your family. We will be completing our second adoption on Nov. 15. We have had our son since he was six days old and our daughter came to us at 4 weeks old and we adopted her on July 17th of this year. Both are now two. The cost to adopt for us has been zero. We are completely reimbursed by the state (Florida). Also, our children will be provided with a 4 year FL state college education, a monthly stipend until they are 18 and Medicaid until they are 18. We never intended to adopt but we fell in love with our two and when the opportunity presented itself, we eagerly accepted.

 

If you have any questions about fostering, please feel free to pm me. Best of luck to you in your quest to add to your family through adoption.

 

:iagree: We adopted 3 children through the fost to adopt program in Los Angeles. The few expenses we had were reimbursed through the county.

[Twinmom]

I used to run a non-profit adoption agency and I can tell you this without a doubt: if you are working with a good, legitimate non-profit, they are NOT making money off of your adoption! Truthfully, most of these agencies don't even break even but rely on donations to keep their doors open. The money is used for a variety of things like office overhead, salaries, legitimate birth mother expenses, medical costs, legal fees and court costs, foster care costs, private investigators (to find the birth father in some cases), travel, outsourced counseling fees, etc. It also goes to pay the expenses involved in serving the many birth parents who ultimately decide to parent their children...it costs money to serve them, too, even though there is ultimately no adoption fee to "pay" for the service. A portion may also go to cover the fees "lost" on some adoptions that are offered on a reduced scale, like special needs placements, minority placements or just to be able to offer a sliding fee scale across the board so that not only the wealthy can adopt. For international, the stateside agency generally keeps a ridiculously low amount of the fee with most of it going to outside costs like a foriegn country fee, INS, etc.

 

So, yes it stinks and yes it is too expensive, but unfortunately much of the cost is necessary in the private sector or these agencies could not offer adoption services at all. One thing you can do to keep your personal costs down is to look for an agency with a sliding fee scale. Another is to ensure that you are not working solely with a lawyer-run agency but rather with a solid non-profit. An attorney-run agency generally will have higher fees due both to higher legal costs as well as a tendency to overinflate birth parent expenses. This is a topic of much ethical debate, but regardless, it happens often in the for-profit sector in order to attract and keep more birth parents...particularly Caucasian ones. Sad but true.

 

One final thought is to consider the placement of a special needs, older or minority child from this country. Many agencies have these children available for placement but have a dirth of families willing to accept them. As an enticement as well as a ministry to these children and their birth parents, the fees are greatly reduced. With the adoption tax credit, some actually end up free in the end. (Two of my four adoptions were done that way!) As others have mentioned, you can also look at becoming a foster-to-adopt parent through either the state or a private agency with a state contract and end up adopting that way, with costs covered and a stipend.

 

It's tough, but don't give up. The kiddos are worth it in the end! Best of luck to you...

[LizzyBee]

I have a sister who adopted six kids through the foster care system in TX. Five of them are biological siblings. They signed up to take only kids who were available for adoption. They didn't pay any fees, the kids all have medicaid without having to meet the income guidelines, and they will receive a monthly stipend for each child until s/he is 18 as long as they continue to reside in TX.

Edited November 3, 2008 by LizzyBee

[hornblower]

A Canadian relative has adopted two children, one from the Republic of Georgia & one from South Carolina, USA. It has cost her A LOT of money. So much so that she's been working pretty much full time since she adopted the first one to pay off the bills & now has adopted a 2nd one with a similarly big cost & will be going back to work in Jan....

 

We discussed it a bit. Just a tiny bit as it would get very uncomfortable very quickly but anyway, I did learn a few things.

 

Our local government actually offers financial assistance and has over a 1000 kids in the foster system who are waiting. Some wait because they are older than 2 yo, or because they are sibling groups who need to be placed together, and yes, many do have some problems. There are few costs associated with pursuing adoption of these children. The relative said she was unwilling to take on a special needs child & she was adamant about getting a baby so she avoided this route.

 

Ironically, her child from the Republic of Georgia has, now 6 years later, turned out to have significant special needs & I suspect will likely need a special ed learning tutor in the classroom.

 

Adoptions from Africa through this program are quite a bit more reasonable compared to some of the other international options. I think it would be in the area of $10K

http://www.africanadoptions.org/policies.htm#fees

I gather she was unwilling to adopt a child from Africa. :001_huh:

[Sparrows-Song]

We are currently going through the state (MS) to try to adopt.

 

We checked with adoption agencies close by and unfortunately, by the time we paid the agency, we would not be able to afford to raise the child. :glare:

 

BT: Does anyone know if you can also apply to go through surrounding states to adopt? In other words, trying to adopt from 2 separate states at once?

[RebeccaS]

We are licensed foster to adopt. We wanted to add more children to our family, but there was no way we were going to put ourselves into such debt with a private adoption to accomplish it. The reason we went foster to adopt is because we wanted to take in children younger than our own and we were told by social services that if we wanted 2 or under we'd have to foster to adopt. It's a gamble. We have no idea if the cutie were are currently fostering will go home or not. But, at this point, it's a gamble I'm willing to make. I don't know how you feel about it, but if you are willing to take any race, you can get a placement more easily (at least here in OH). Those who are waiting for caucasian newborns will have a long wait.;) Our little one also has special needs, too, so that may be something to consider in fostering to adopt. What I mean is, her special needs are due to her injuries that got her removed in the first place. Good luck! And feel free to pm if you want to talk more.

[MotherMayI]

We have been incredibly lucky as our daughter came home when she was 1 day old, she was legally free at 4 months and at 8 months she is adopted! In WA we have what they call "fast-track" cases due to birth parents prior history of terminations. This was the case for our daughter. We were prepared for a rocky road, but it never came:001_smile: Any costs that were incurred will be reimbursed through the state and we got a monthly stipend as well as WIC throughout the process. Also, any medical expenses in the future that are not covered by our insurance will be covered through the state medical coupon.

 

I have several friends who have adopted through the state foster/adopt programs, and although each of us had different experiences as far difficulty goes, we would all do it again.

 

I would recommend doing your research on your state, and getting feedback from families there who have gone through the process. This will help you determine how great the risks are and if they are risks you are willing to take. Each state is different and some are riskier than others.

 

Best wishes,

[KrissiK]

We adopted our three children through our County CFS. It's free, we got a reimbursement while they were foster children. The boys were 13 months and 4 months when we adopted them (they're bio brothers). Our daughter was 2 days old, we picked her up from the hospital. The wait for them was pretty short (3 weeks for our boys, 6 months for our daughter). We are trying to adopt again and we've been waiting well over a year now. Initially we were very pleased working with the County, now we are very frustrated. However, our children are wonderful. They came from a very scary background, but I'd say they are a good example of how raising a child in the right environment can negate a lot of the bad stuff they got early on.

[mom26]

We adopted 2 children from Liberia, West Africa almost 2 years ago. We had a HUGE yardsale with donated items from friends and raised 2 thousand dollars this way.It was a ton of work but well worth the effort;) We also received a grant through Shoahannah's Hope. With the adoption tax credit and deductions for having a total of 6 children now,things were not as daunting as we thought it would be. There is a wonderful yahoo group for adoptive parents with ideas for raising funds...here is the address if you want to join and gather some ideas.

 

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/fundraisingforadoption/

 

I know many mentioned other options but I didn't want you to become discouraged and close the door on international adoption if you are feeling led in that direction. We were truly amazed at how the Lord made a way where there seemed to be no way...He provided for our every need. We received several generous monetary anonymous gifts and others who were supportive of our adoptive graciously gave to us without us even asking. Either way it is a faith walk and a wonderful miracle to see how the Lord sovereignly joins children to the family of His choosing.

may the Lord bless you and clearly lead you as you seek His will!!

Blessings,

kathi