I got our packet today from the adoption agency we thought would be a great fit. Little did I know that we will be headed back to the drawing board. When we checked into this journey last summer, I check out a national agency that has a local office here in our area. I was completely floored at how much it would cost us to adopt a baby through them. Along this journey I have sense found that there are more agencies locally that are not quite as expensive. So, I really excited when I found an agency that was affiliated with my church denomination. I thought oh this is for sure the place for us. I filled out our pre application and thought, OK here we go!
Well to my dismay the pre application didn't make it to them, so I was in contact with them last week and they got it, and sent us our packet. We were both excited to open it together and see what all was in there, since the website was a tad vague. Well, I know that those of you who have adopted have experience with how expensive it is to adopt, but my hopes and dreams of getting far in this process were kind of snuffed out when I saw and did the calculations of exactly how much it will cost us even on a sliding scale. And let me be frank, neither one of us make too terribly much in comparison to the the top out of the sliding scale but we are not that far from the top. So, I am just a little worried that this is not going to happen for us.
I would love to chat with some of you about this. I just don't know how or where to start to save the amount of money we are talking here. I guess it's back to the drawing board and maybe we will look into adoption lawyers to see what the difference in price is.
I completely understand why it is not a cake walk to be able to adopt to make sure that people are serious, and that the babies will have a great forever family. But, why do they make it so hard. Is living with the Scarlet letters IF not bad enough??? Nope, lets make it a little harder. I would venture to say that most people who can have their own kids couldn't afford adoption fees if they were imposed on you for your own children. Am I the only one who feels or thinks this? Just wondering.
We used a small, local agency, Catholic Charities in our little town of about 50,000. I know there are some lawyers out there too locally, but we didn't pursue that route. The fees for CC were about $5-6000 and included the home study. Plus lawyer fees of about $1000. Plus another $500-1000 for misc like our profile book, fingerprints, fees, etc. I know that's really, really cheap, but it worked ok for us. The "agency" if you call it that is one lady part time working on counseling, adoptions and birth moms, so we thought nothing would happen there. It was too small.
ReplyDeleteWe decided to go with a lawyer in a larger city about 1.5 hours south. I'm not sure how much total it would be for them, but we were shown a few situations with $25-30,000. However, they advertised nationally, so those adoptions were on the higher end of the scale. If it was a birth mom who walked in, it would be more around $15,000-20,000.
I'd advocate going the lawyer route. And make sure they do plenty of adoptions or are known for them. We got our lawyers name from my MIL who knew of a couple who went there and had great success. Word of mouth is good.
Let people know you are looking to adopt. Some are great resources with both money and info. God will provide. I know we took out another credit card as "just in case money", as we expected to pay $30k. But so far haven't had to use it. Also, I've seen people have a PayPal button to donate on the side of their blog. You could do that.
I don't know if I answered or helped, but anynquestions, let me know. I've been praying for you and will continue to do so!
Morgan, I know that nunber can be overwhelming. But as much as people shower a biological baby with money/gifts etc, so will they shower an expecting family who is adopting. Che and I are donating an iPad RIGHT now for a fundraiser for a family we don't even know personally. God will get the money:) There are so many creative ways to do it. If money is the only obstacle in your hearts for pursing adoption, I pray you take comfort in the knowledge that the money will come. Che and I can always do another iPad giveaway:) Speaking of which, you can enter to win it! Check my blog tomorrow or my FB for info:0 I'd love for someone I know to win it. I have heard of and been part of so many awesome and unique fundraisers. We could get teh ball rolling for you guys too!
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