HELLO - neebie-ish here!

hopeby2015

Hi! I've been lurking for a long time and decided its probably time to introduce myself. For the last 3 years, me and DH started with IF treatments and then took about 1.5 years off to kinda enjoy life and try to accept the situation we are in now and to really explore if we could live w.o having children or if we should adopt. Recently, we realized that we wanted children and we wanted to adopt. I am a bit scared and nervous about this. However, I promised my DH to put aside my worries and just see where this path takes us. Thus far, we've looked into a couple of adoption agencies and we are going to go to an information session for Bethany Christian services in Nov. And if anyone's used them, I was just wondering something about them - on the website it says the average fee is $18k but when they emailed me an info packet it stated about $27k total ... Does that mean they have a sliding scale for their fee or am I misunderstanding something?

TIA ladies!

irismorning

I do not know anything about Bethany, but welcome to the board!

sumati

We are going to an info meeting this Thursday with Bethany. I also have friends that are much farther along in the adoption process through Bethany.

From what my friend has told me, Bethany is based on your total income.  I am not sure about the specifics yet.  But this is one of the reasons we are most likely going to go with Bethany.  Way more affordable for us.  I'm not sure if all Bethany's fee structure is this way, but that is the way the one in my area seems to be.  If you PM me... I can give you more info after I go to the meeting Thursday!

maryoosa

We didn't work with Bethany, but I know with our agency there is the average *placement fee* and then there are all kinds of other fees: adminstrative, registration, homestudy, legal, birth parent legal, adoptive parent legal etc. and none of those fees are part of the actual "placement fee"  so while the placement fee for our agency might seem reasonable, once you add everything else in you're up in the high 20's low 30K's.

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aligross

We are working with a Bethany office... I can tell you that they do not do a  sliding scale for income etc. They have boldly stated this to the DH and I a couple times as a few other offices (other Bethany offices) have started to do this, but it is their national policy NOT to do a sliding scale. 

Online they tell you 18K because that is simply for their fees (applications, home study, placement etc) the 28K that you are seeing is for all the EXTRA stuff you'll have to go through with your state. We were told to plan for about the 25K mark. 

What I can tell you is that we pay as things are completed. So, once our home study is written and approved we will pay the 3k for that. Their portal is incredible and I love it!

Feel free to PM me if you have any questions about the company! I can see what I can do to help ya out! 

sumati

Each office must be different.  The office here does a 10% of income for placement fees plus the fees of the application, home study, online profile, etc (Which is about $2-3K here).  So it must vary from state to state or office to office.  We are looking at paying $10-15K total. But I also live in one of the nation's poorest states, so that could be why our fees are way lower.

kva11isho

Hello and congratulations!  Welcome to the board.  We are not working with Bethany, but wanted to let you know not to let your fears get the best of you!  We were terrified when we began the process last October, but I read "Called to Adoption" by Mardi Caldwell, and one section mentions to not avoid doing something simply because you are afraid.  I don't do this in my day to day life, so why would I let fear get in the way of the most important decision of my life - becoming a mom!  Good luck to you and keep us posted!

hopeby2015

Thank you so mucheveryone! Looks like I will have to find out what this office does. (Fingers crossed for a income-based sliding scale). and thank you for the recommendation - I will check out the book.