For those of you who have completed a domestic adoption...

bcnoelle · August 2012

Would you mind sharing your out-of-pocket costs prior to any tax credits? Including home study, attorney fees, any travel fees, any birth mother expenses, agency fees, etc? Was there any costs that surprised you? TIA!

orangecupcake · August 2012

In total we spent about $23k. $1k for home study, $1k for attorney (we knew the attorney, so we got a deal, I think), about $200 for travel (hotel and gas - just had to go an hour away), $50 for birthmother expenses, the remainder was agency fees (application fee, active fee, match fee, and placement fee).

When we got our refund, we ended up getting $19k back from both state and federal.

IRR · August 2012

We are still going through process, but our homestudy was $2,200 +$200 for criminal background checks.. Attorney is $8-10K. BM expenses about $10k. We need an agency for our state but since this is being treated more like private, it will only be $5k for BM counseling etc.. Travel so far has been $1,000 for first visit. Assuming travel for birth it will be another $3-5K since we need to stay in state for 2 weeks. Never heard of BM expenses at only $50. We expect total costs to be around $25-$30K.

jackieo1309 · August 2012

We haven't completed our adoption but I can tell you what I know so far. Our agency, like some others for domestic adoption, is based on a sliding scale based on income. Our total costs to the agency are $13,500 and we had to pay another $1500 to another local agency for our homestudy (since our agency is out-of-state). The told us BM costs can be up to $10k but we decided to cap it at $5k, so we won't be shown to the few birthmothers they work with that require more than that. If we match outside one of the 6 states our agency works in we will have to pay up to $4k for a lawyer to take relinquishments since they can only take them in their 6 states (with our agency there's a 75% chance of it being within one of their 6 states). They went through some of the other costs at the orientation and one that we didn't really think about was the nursery costs for the baby. From what I understand, insurance companies are required to cover your baby as soon as papers are signed but they don't have to cover them before that. Our agency said that some will, but they don't have to. So you may be responsible for nursery costs for the 48 hours (more or less) until papers are signed. Travel costs will really vary based on where you have to travel and how long you wait for ICPC. Others who have completed their adoptions might be able to tell you more about surprise costs. HTH!

orangecupcake · August 2012

IRR:
We are still going through process, but our homestudy was $2,200 +$200 for criminal background checks.. Attorney is $8-10K. BM expenses about $10k. We need an agency for our state but since this is being treated more like private, it will only be $5k for BM counseling etc.. Travel so far has been $1,000 for first visit. Assuming travel for birth it will be another $3-5K since we need to stay in state for 2 weeks. Never heard of BM expenses at only $50. We expect total costs to be around $25-$30K.

It was only $50 because that is all she asked for - she needed maternity clothes, so she got a gift card for $50. She also neede pads, so we paid $3 for those. Our agency caps BM expenses at around $3k, but you only pay for what they use.

IRR · August 2012

orangecupcake:
It was only $50 because that is all she asked for - she needed maternity clothes, so she got a gift card for $50. She also neede pads, so we paid $3 for those. Our agency caps BM expenses at around $3k, but you only pay for what they use.

WOW. Not sure what state you live in, but our BM maternity clothes budget is $400. Where I live $50 would maybe get us a pair of jeans or a couple of tops.

IRR · August 2012

bcnoelle - YGPM as well.

MagickalNarwhal · August 2012

Our agency has set fees, and we don't pay any expenses to the expectant parents. Agency fees were $24,000. We also spent about $200 printing our profile books. We saw the expectant couple a lot before the birth, and it was usually over a meal. The agency paid for the first two meals but be picked up the tab for the rest, probably about $200. And, we went a little overboard with gifts for them after the adoption was complete (we kept seeing things that reminded us of them!) and spent about $200 there too. The final expenses are attourney fees to finalize, which will total about $2,000. So, in all, a little over $26k.

kmkaull2 · August 2012

Our agency had a set fee of about $16,000. We had no birth mother expenses.

summergirl79 · August 2012

Around 33K, used two agencies.

orangecupcake · August 2012

I live in Kansas.

I should also clarify, our agency pays for these things and they bill us for them after placement. If our BM needed more, she just needed to ask the agency, but according to the agency she didn't even want to ask for that.

ETA-this was in response to IRR

Dr.Loretta · August 2012

~$34K

That included an application fee, a brief course on adoption we took with our SW, profile fee (we took a day-long course on profiles with her as well), match fee ($20-22K if memory serves), post-placement fee to cover visits and reports, lawyer fees ($3500). There were some other miscellaneous fees including our clearances, travel for our SW to come to us a few times, our profile video ($350), and copies of our profile. And travel (2-hour drive) to meet DD and her BM, pick her up from the hospital, and go to her finalization.

We paid no BM expenses. They aren't required in our state, and we could choose to contribute to a BM fund our agency uses to pay out expenses. We were encouraged to keep that # low, around $1k each for medical and living expenses. As it turned out, DD's BM didn't need any.

HTH

MarionB79 · August 2012

Exactly $20K. This includes everything. Our agency charges 20% of gross annual family income, minimum $8K max $20K. (Yes we were lucky to pay the max. ;o) )

They take care of BM expenses, legal fees, and so on. I think it was something like 1500 for the HS and 1500 to get into the match book and then the rest was due at placement. We didn't pay anything else until BPs relinquished their parental rights.

Someone else brought up health care costs. Our DS was in the NICU for 19 days. We were fortunate, our BM has state insurance because of low income and the hospital social worker kept DS on that for the whole hospital stay. Apparently that is up to the hospital social worker to do. I asked her if she needed our insurance card because parents had signed their rights away, and she just said "Don't worry about it until he's released from the hospital". It really helped, because we would have had quite a few co-pays.

So I guess it always depends who you are dealing with.

Good luck!

silliestbunny · August 2012

My story is convulted w/failed matches and changes of agencies... so I won't give you the details. But we'd budgeted $35K for an adoption and we came in right at $70K for two adoptions... and that accounts for switching agencies, failed match fees, etc. We started big budget and ended low budget but had lots of money lost along the way (if we only look at costs for DD1's adoption, it would be about $8500 but I have to roll in lots of lost fees and birth mom expenses for the failed matches.)

Suprises along the way--- we never really thought about the small fees.. it seems like initially when you start w/an agency or facilitator, there's lots of $100 here and there that feel like you are constantly writing checks. Fees for printing, fees for changes to profiles because you have to subtract something for a certain agency, fees for updated medical records from doctors... none of this costs much but $100 here and $50 there feels defeating at times.

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