How much $$$

rlyttle

How much did/does your adoption cost? We are looking into it and the costs seems very high and varies at different agencies. 

jillianmb

We are doing international and ours is $35,000 which includes 3 round trip flights plus one 1-way flight from Russia.

When we were looking into domestic most of the programs we considered were around $20,000.

erinmc1

Ours is $21K, not including lawyer fees.

ufsandra85

ours is about 42k before our 4k grant and 2k military benefit. that includes everything

crene84

Since I am going with an attorney, I won't know the final fees until it's done but he estimated approximately $3,000-6,000 attorney fees (as long as it is a clean situation), the home study was $1,300, and advertising is going to be between $100-300/month depending on if we do the extreme exposure option.  Based on my attorney's experience, he said to count on $10,000-$15,000. 

bumpuser794640

Our agency has a sliding scale, we are on the lowest fee schedule and will pay about $22,000 + legal fees (usually less than $1000) in order to finalize our adoption.

KdgTeacher

By the time everything is said and done, around $8-10K

IRR

Based on our state we needed to use an agency, but also we decided to start with an attorney.  All in it should end up between $25-$30K.  Will depend on where we stay for the two weeks once baby is born before the court date and cost of plane tickets.  Agencies in our state were a minimum of $30k.  YES every agency has different costs.  Since we identified a BM first and then brought in a agency, our placement agency fee will only be about $4K.  HS also have different costs based on agency etc. and can run anywhere from $1,500-$3,000.

silliestbunny

I have been very open about our expenses within what I think is an industry that doesn't do the best at making the real "total" known...

DD1-   About $7000.  This was a private/independent adoption w/no maternal expenses. 

DD2-  About $29,000.  This was a facilitar/private independent adoption w/high maternal expenses.

However, note that we waited 22 months. In that initial wait, we made some costly decisions and had some failed matches.

Adoption Org#1-  we waited 22 months and never matched.  We paid them $11,500 for advertising which never resulted in anything. 

Failed Match 1-   We lost $2500 in initial match fee plus approximately $1200 in plane fare totalling $3700 lost.

Failed Match 2-  We lost $5000.

Failed Match 3- Agency required 1/2 upfront so we have $17,500 sitting in an agency which could be rolled into another adoption.

So--- for two adoptions, the adoptions cost $36,000 which is LOW but in the process it we lost (or abandoned/saved for another day) $38,900.

Adoptions can range greatly.  Also, the decisions you make can leave you w/big losses.  Understanding how money is collected, what's rolled over, etc is really important if you network and try to have more exposure to more agencies and lawyers.

srmmm09

Our international adoption (Uganda) will probably end up being ~$23000. That's including being in-country for 4 weeks for DH, myself, and DS.

miss1180

We're adopting from Korea. It will probably end up costing a little over $30,000. The fees were like $22,000... plus the cost of a week there when we go to pick him up, plus some other costs (fingerprinting, filing immigration paperwork, etc). we're hoping the tax credit gets extended at the end of this year!!!

Jenn is Silly

We are budgeting on about $38-40K for our Colombian adoption.  Our agency fee's will likely be around $28-30K, plus finalization fee's in our home state, and then budgeting a 9 week (hopefully it's closer to 4 week) in country stay.  Really the 9 week stay is the kicker for me, DH, and DD.

Our domestic NB adoption (private adoption) was in total about $20K, however between the tax credit, and employee reimbursement we got all but $2K back.

Dr.Loretta

$34K when all was said and done. We looked at an agency that said they were more like $17K, but in retrospect I think there would have been some "hidden" fees.

We recouped 2/3 of it between the tax refund and DH's company adoption reimbursement program.

Mush-Tastic

Just got our contract in the mail outlining all the fees...apparently we can expect to pay around $14,000 - $16,500 for domestic newborn adoption.

firecracker8

Our fee with our agency was right around $17,000. But, we moved before we matched so we had to update our home study in our new state with added and extra $4,000 for the update and post placement visits. Our attorney cost $2,000 so right around 22-23 when it was all said and done. If we hadn't moved, it would have only been the $17,000 since that would have included post placement and legal fees.

steph196

We did domestic infant and it was $24,000 to the agency as well as approximately $3,000 in additional costs and finalization costs.

aboehman1

Did anyone finance their adoption or do you have to pay with cash?  

c&dwaiting4ourmiracle

Ours is probably a little on the high side, but we loved our agency.  The activation fee was $10,000, home study $2,000 (separate agency in our state), profile and video fees $1,500, lawyer (for her and us),mom expenses and other agency fees $31,550 (we set our budget, since you can do that we our agency), travel (includes airfare, car rental and hotel for 3 weeks $4,000 and finally our post placement visits $900-1,200.  I think I lost count, but thankfully everything has been paid cash (no loans).