Hellobee

One of the most common things I hear about adoption is, “I really want to adopt but I just can’t afford it,” or “How did you afford all those fees.”  Well several of us have decided to share with you about the cost of our adoptions.  Mrs. Jacks shared last week a wonderfully written post about finances and adoption.  In her post she had a link to the national averages for all types of adoptions.  Averages can give a general idea, but that means that there are some adoptions that run much lower and some that are much higher.

Three of us are going to share with you the actual costs of our adoptions.  Each of us had a domestic infant adoption with our children placed with us just after leaving the hospital.  One of the most important things to remember when talking about finances and adoption is that our children did not cost us anything.  They are our children and they are priceless. What does cost money is the work that is done to unite a family with their child.  Several of our adoptive mom bees are unable to discuss the details of their adoptions because they are currently in the process of a second adoption and are not at liberty to publicly share the information.  Mrs. Paintbrush is open to private conversations about the cost of her international adoptions from Korea.

Our home study and application fees added up to about $2,500 and were due from from the get-go. However, the local agency we originally chose had a long average wait time, so they encourage all their applicants/waiting families to apply to other agencies across the country that have low application fees. This is one reason we chose this particular agency. They are not in the business of finding as many women wanting to place their babies as possible, but finding good homes for the children of the women that do come to their office and are confident in their adoption plan.

Another reason we chose them as our primary agency is that other than the application and home study fees, we wouldn’t owe anything to them until placement. This allowed us to have our profile shown at 2 different agencies. If fees had been owed along the way (even upon a match) that would have cost us a lot of money and committed us to just one agency. It was also nerve-wracking to us that some agencies would require money upon a match, but if that match fell through what you already paid was non-refundable. Or it could go toward future adoptions with taht particular agency, which again would limit which agencies we could work with. We ending up finding another in-state agency that just charged a $350 application fee to have our profile shown. But again, we wouldn’t owe anything else until placement. So, we applied there as well.

We ended up being matched with Agency #2 that was still in state but several hours away. They used an income-based sliding scale for their placement fee that we owed the day we brought Little Piñata home. This total came to about $17,500.

After we brought Little P home we still had to pay the fees for the post-placement visits from Agency #1. If we had been matched through Agency #1, these fees would have been bundled into the placement fee. But, since we were matched with Agency #2, we didn’t want to pay all the extra travel expenses of having a social worker drive several hours to do our post-placement visits. So, we paid individually for each of our visits (and organization of the court report) with Agency #1. This total came to around $1,500.

The final fees were the fees paid to our lawyer for finalization. Agency #1 recommended a lawyer that specializes in adoptions and our total fees to her came to about $1,500. Our finalization was very simple because both birthparents terminated their rights without contestation. These fees were paid in installments after we brought Little P home but before finalization 6 months later.

So, the total came to around $23,000. This was definitely more than we had planned on, but of course, totally worth it! Thankfully, there is currently a tax credit that we were able to take advantage of! So, even though we did have to pay all of these fees, between the fundraising event we planned after we brought Little P home and the tax credit, we were able to get reimbursed for many of the costs after the fact.

Here’s more information about the adoption tax credit: http://www.irs.gov/Individuals/Adoption-Benefits-FAQs.

We picked our agency because it had a hard set price. There were no birth mother fees or other expenses. Because we knew our funds were limited, we were more comfortable with having a set budget. In total our agency cost $19,000. I know this seems like a crazy amount of money to some, but it was over a two year period. We were paying over $1000 a month in fertility treatments, so we just kept saving that money each month to fund our adoption. I’m sorry I don’t have the exact information anymore, so this was the general payment process. It was five years ago and I can’t find the payment schedule paperwork.

We had several small payments to begin with; several hundred dollars to start the application, another several hundred with our application. We had to pay for fingerprints and background checks, and at home social worker visits. All of this added up to the first $3,000. It was spread out over 4 months. Once we finished our home study and we were to become a waiting family, we owed $6,000. Then upon  lacement of  our son we paid $10,000. With our agency each of those payments had optional payment plans. So we were allowed to pay smaller amounts each month until we had paid in full.  In general our agencies rule that was by finalization  (usually around 6 months to get a court date in LA) the last payment would need to be paid.

Unfortunately for us that was not the end of our costs like we had planned. Mr. Train and I had saved everything we had and then we got the news that our adoption was to be contested and we would have to pay the lawyers’ fees. We were told it could reach up to another $40,000. As I sat there crying thinking we would lose our son because of finances, both of our parents said they would help. So over the year of our contested adoption we paid over $20,000 in lawyers’ fees.

We were very hurt and angry during the process. All other parties had free lawyers but in the end it was worth it. Our parents have never complained once about the costs we racked up during that year. My heart hurts to think what would have happened without them to step in and help.

I’m hesitant to put all of the numbers into writing. It is hard to talk specific figures because what is hard to afford for us, is change to someone else.

When we were approached by Isaiah’s birth mom, we didn’t know exactly what we needed to do first. I contacted the adoption attorney that my parents used for my brothers and he gave me the skinny.

First I was to contact a local Social Services organization. They were to handle all aspects of the adoption until Isaiah was born. After that our attorney would come in with his legal paperwork, and we would also be working with social services afterward. Here is a rough breakdown of how things went:

10/20/12 – Application fee: $300.00
10/30/12 – Digital fingerprinting: $78.90
11/19/12 – First visit with social worker: $250.00
11/19/12 – Local background checks: $14.00
11/28/12 – Second visit with social worker: $250.00
12/10/12 – In home visit with social worker: $1,100.00
2/27/13 – Attorney fee: $1,300.00
3/6/13 – Birth mother fees: $580.00
6/24/13 – Post placement with social worker: $600.00
7/1/13 – Attorney fee: $1,976.00

Total: $6,448.90

I look at that number (for the first time, I hadn’t added it all up before) and realize that it is small change compared to other adoptions.

Our adoption cost less because we were matched outside of an agency. If the agency we used had done the matching, our costs would have been double.