It's Rearely Ever Cheap

The month of November is Adoption Awareness. I always try to do my part during National Infertility Awareness Week, and as adoption has become a BIG part of our lives recently, I wanted to do my part and spread awareness for adoption too. My goal I guess is twofold. First, there are obviously many of my readers who are struggling with infertility and adoption is a family building choice. I'll never be the one to push adoption on anyone, as I think it's a very personal decision for each couple. But I do want everyone to know and understand more about adoption in case that becomes a potential family building option for any of my friends. The second goal is to spread general awareness to those outside of the infertility community. I think friends and family of infertile couples are typically well meaning and simply trying to help when they offer adoption as a solution to infertility. Again, it's my opinion that how any couple deals with infertility is entirely up to them. There have been LOTS of occasions over the last few years in which I would have chosen a different path forward than my friends, and they can probably say the same about me... any decision on how to deal with infertility is really, really personal. That being said, I hope I can open some eyes to why more couples aren't diving into adoption as soon as they hear the diagnosis. I don't want to scare anyone away from adoption... we think it's GREAT and we're really, really excited about our opportunity. I'm  also not looking for sympathy. We chose this path with eyes wide open to all of this stuff AND we feel blessed to even have this option. However, it's still good to look at the facts, and so far we've found that adoption is not that simple, it's never easy, and as we'll see today, it's rarely ever cheap.

Cheap is a relative term in the adoption world. Cheap is under $10,000, and I'm pretty sure few if any of us would call anything costing $10,000 cheap. That's uhh, approximately twice what my car is worth. That's more than both of of our vehicles combined. $10,000 is still a lot of money. Now of course there are certainly some adoption scenarios that are much less than $10,000. Do you remember our simplest adoption scenario from the first post in which the birth mother was put in touch with an adoptive couple simply by friends, family, or other contacts? Well like most things in life, the simplest is also often the cheapest. In this scenario, the adoptive parents pay attorney fees, and those fees can really run the gamut. You obviously want a good attorney who knows adoption laws and can get your paperwork processed correctly, but you also aren't necessarily interested in financing someone's new Bentley, right? Our consultant said she's got a few attorney contacts who she refers clients to in these situations who regularly charge $2,000 or less. If you have no travel fees, then the additional expenses would be for things like the home study. Definitely much cheaper. And of course foster to adopt or adoptions through the state are often free, the state covers any expenses. So yes, cheaper adoptions can happen.

But think for a minute: how often in your circles do you hear of women who want to place a child for adoption? It has literally never happened to me. Even if you spread the word and have friends and family passing along your info, how many scenarios do you think you'll find? That's where agencies and attorneys come in. They serves as the middle man to unite the birth mothers with potential adoptive parents, and vice versa. But as most things in life, the more people you add to a project, the more the price goes up. Now you're not only paying for an attorney to complete the adoption paperwork, but you're also paying the attorney or agency for things like finding the birth mother (advertisement fees), working with the birth mother during the pregnancy (often called agency or adoption fees), etc.

In some scenarios the adoptions are basically a flat fee. This is often the scenario for charitable organizations who can subsidize the actual costs of adoption with money raised from fundraisers and donors. For example, Bethany Christian Services claims that they work to cover 40% of the actual cost of an adoption, so that the adopting family pays only 60%... 60% is still a lot, but it's better than 100%, right? In other situations, it's more of a pay for what you get type of system. If your agency or attorney has to do more than the average amount of work to locate a birth father and get him to sign, you're going to pay additional fees. But, the reverse is true too. If your situation is pretty simple, then your fees will (hopefully reflect that). Adoptive Families' website claims the average cost for an adoption through an agency is $33,793 and through an attorney is $31,465. I'll mostly agree with those numbers as we've seen cases as low $27,000 and as high as $49,000.

Here's an example of fees, just so you can get an idea of how these giant totals come together:

Adoption Agency Fee: $8,500
Adoptive Parent Attorney: $7,500
Birth Mother Attorney: $2,500
Birth Father Attorney: $750*
Guardian ad Litem for Child: $750
Notice to Putative Father Publication: $300
Social/Medical History Intake: $300
District Court: $300
Counseling: $500*
Birth Mother Expenses: $7,950

• Rent- [($550 x 5 months) + $500 deposit]- $3,250
• Utilities- ($100 x 5 months)- $500
• Cable/Phone Service- ($100 x 5 months)- $500
• Groceries- ($75 x 25 weeks)- $2,750
• Transportation- ($50 x 5 months)- $250
• Clothing- $500
• Miscellaneous- $200

Total: $29,350 (fees marked with asterisk on as needed basis) 

I'm not going to lie people, the cost of adoption is frustrating. If you remember I shared a statistic that said that 33% of people think about adoption, but only 2% actually adopt. Well, the study goes on to say that 79% of those who think about adoption are concerned about the cost and list finances as a major hurdle. If the difficult hurdles don't scare them away, the cost almost certainly will. And that's sad, there's no doubt about it. Believe me, I want to revolutionize the system, find ways of lowering the costs while still using ethical practices and ensuring that all parties get fair wages. But guys, I feel the same way about healthcare in the US. I want to find ways to lower the insane costs of healthcare and insurance while still ensuring that doctors actually have incentive to go to and through med school and residency and fellowships. I feel similarly about higher education. I want to find ways to lower the cost of higher education in this country so that young graduates aren't paralyzed by student loans that they have little to no hope of repaying. I want a lot of things, and lower adoption costs is just one of them. But just as I felt compelled to sign on the dotted line for student loans at the age of 18, I feel similarly stuck within the adoption world. It's a many pronged seesaw, I tell you. You want your adoption to be ethical, but also cheap, but also fast. Tip to far to the "cheap" range with one agency or attorney, and you've got to start looking at the ethics. Similarly, anyone promising a fast track to an adoption, especially in the international world, is probably practicing unethical practices.

So is the longest or most expensive route the most ethical? Maybe the longest, but certainly not the most expensive. Sam and I receive a small breakdown of the fees for each adoption scenario, and honestly this is the very first thing I look at. And it's not just the bottom line (though that's important too) but if we see really exorbitant numbers in the breakdown, I'm either saying no immediately or asking for clarification before we ever request that our profile gets sent. While we fully believe that all parties involved in the adoption process deserve to get paid for their services, we're also not interested in single-handedly funding their kids' college fund, you know?

For a lot of couples the price tag is a giant, flashing stop sign. And I get that. It was for us for a long time. At every single junction in the infertility treatment journey, assisted reproductive technology proved the cheaper option for us. And you've all heard me whine for a quite a few years now about the cost of infertility treatments, so you know those aren't cheap either. It's hard to chose the more expensive option. Even for us, a couple who was for adoption, who intended to adopt one day, even for us it was hard. Think about it like this: IVF is, let's use a nice round number, $15,000. Everyone hopes that the $15,000 will yield baby number one and brother or sister on ice. Adoption is, let's average it out and say $30,000. That's for one baby, no future siblings in that deal. When you're looking at building every. single. piece of your family at a substantial price tag, you start to look at the price tag a little more closely. Buy one, get one starts to look better and better... I'm just being honest here, folks. So yes, adoption is beautiful. Yes, adoption is a very valid choice. Yes, adoption is worth the money. Adoption is all of those things, but it's often not the cheapest family building choice, so it's easy to see why many infertile couples choose to toss the dice with infertility treatments rather than change gears and switch into an entirely different world that's neither simple, nor easy, nor cheap.

Thanks for diving in with me everyone. I hope this little series helped to answer at least one of your questions about adoption. I know I've been neck deep in the adoption world for a few months now and I still have tons of questions. It really is a whole new world and I'm still learning something new everyday.