Domestic waiting child/older child adoption?

[Anonymous]

A few years ago on the forum there were a couple of posters who said they did domestic older child adoptions, and that it cost about $20,000. I thought most older child domestic adoptions were via foster care. Why would the expenses be so high?

For those of you who have adopted a legally free child from foster care (or tried to) in the US, did you use an agency? Any advice? We've extensively researched the traditional newborn agency route and don't feel it is right for us (even though we'd be happy to have an infant, up to 6 years old.)

Thanks in advance,

Allison

[Anonymous]

Our son came to us when he was a year old in 2009 via domestic private adoption. The cost ended up being $19K, which was a combination of the Home Study, advertising, legal fees and travel expenses. The cost would have been the same for a newborn or for a child a few years older than our son.

More recently we learned that our son has a little sister, who was already in foster care. As her kin, we were offered the chance to adopt her, which we're doing now. The total cost of this adoption look like they will be about $1,500, which is basically our travel costs to go to the state where she was in foster care to bring her home. In the meantime we're actually being paid a small daily stipend, and are receiving a contribution towards the costs of daycare. To adopt from foster care we had to go into the foster care system ourselves, which is what we did. I don't see why you would need an agency to adopt from foster care. Keep in mind though that foster care is more about reunification with the biological parents, or their kin, first and then if that's not an option, the child may be placed for adoption with the foster parents likely being presented with the opportunity.

[Anonymous]

How did you find your first child? I've heard children that young (but not newborns) are very rare in US adoptions.

Allison

[Anonymous]

Luck really. We were listed on ParentProfiles and generally advertising that we hoped to adopt a newborn. A friend knew we were looking, and told us that he knew of a little boy, 10 months old, and asked if we would be interested because that was outside the age range we specified in our adoption profile. We said we were. He passed that along to the birthmother who called us a few days later. We flew to meet her that weekend, fell in love with her son, talked a lot, and mutually agreed that we wanted to move forward with the adoption plan. At the time our adoption attorney told me it was very rare to adopt a toddler. I didn't have a frame of reference then, but now I'm active in an adoption education and support group and also a foster parent, I've come to appreciate how right our adoption attorney was.