Adoption Risks

You have decided to adopt and there's a lot on the line.  You have put your heart out there in anticipation of the adoption.  You and your husband may experience emotional ups and downs.  To add to it, there's the money.   Adoption is a huge financial hurdle.  Lets talk about that hurdle for a second.   Most couples pay a fee for your application.  Then you pay for the fee of the home study.   Then your next purchase is the fee for the adoption.  And then some agencies factor in birth mother fees to pay for the birth mothers rent, utilities, etc. while she is pregnant.  

NOTE: Some agencies call the birth mother expenses "At Risk" money meaning you will lose that money if the birth mother backs out. 

Obviously you need to protect your money because for some couples, its all they can do to pay for one adoption without some it being "At Risk".   Let me tell you what we did for our second adoption.   We started out using an agency where the fees were going to be around 15k and they provided everything for that fee.  You only paid that when you were placed with the child.  When that happened there was no risk.   However, they were very slow and we found out they weren't very good at managing their cases.  So as a result we went to a referral agency. 

NOTE: I talk about Referral agencies in my ebook.

We paid this Referral agency a fee but she was plugged into many adoption agencies who have children available for adoption.   For real, there are agencies with not enough adoptive families out there.  Strange isn't it.  But there is.  We went through several matches that didn't work out.  If we didn't have our referral agency though, when the match was made, we would pay that new agency our money.  Then when the match doesn't work out, they don't pay you back.  You are "Stuck" with their agency at that point.  The secret is to not pay until you have the child.   Ask that question up front.  When will I pay the money?  On Match or on placement.  In  our case, the referral agency fees were well worth it because not only did she provide us with a situation, she was our advocate throughout the process until placement.  

God Bless you
Joe