Please share your experience with Jennifer Fairfax

[Anonymous]

DH and I are starting to look into adoption and would like to hear some experiences regarding costs and time it took. We prefer newborns and don't have racial or gender preferences. Thanks!

[Anonymous]

It seems to me that you're asking two questions. One is about Jennifer Fairfax the lawyer, the second is about adopting a newborn. I'm not sure how they're related - do you think she's going to procure a baby?

She is very well regarded on this forum, I'm sure if you do some searches she will pop up.

[Anonymous]

Jennifer Fairfax can represent you and give you guidance but as all attorneys in MD, they cannot match. We tried several attorneys in the area and they ranged from bad to terrible. For our adoption, the one we ended up with was terrible, messed up paperwork, didn't bother to tell us we cleared ICPC in two weeks and we stayed in a hotel for three weeks, etc.. we found her and she cleaned everything up and easily and quickly got us to finalization. She was also very nice to our birth mom at the finalization. She's the only one I'd use. We adopted 6 years ago.

[Anonymous]

Jennifer Fairfax was a supreme professional, personable, knowledgable-----I cannot say enough good things about her. You could not do better than JF. i adopted just 2 years ago. HIGHLY RECOMMEND!!!!!!!!!

[Anonymous]

Also highly recommend-efficient, lovely person, and reasonable fees.

[Anonymous]

We used Jennifer Fairfax and found that she was prompt, professional, and easy to work with. We adopted 3 years ago.

[Anonymous]

We used Jennifer Fairfax - she is licensed in MD, DC and VA which was great since our birth mom ended up being local. Very professional, responsive and able to answer all of our questions. She is very ethical and unlike some other lawyers in this area, she has never been involved in questionable practices around adoption. We adopted last year. She helped us find a good agency to work with and helped us with private searching. Our birth mom found us privately and Jennifer handled everything including getting the birth mom an attorney right away and counseling arranged. Our experience was great. Highly recommend her.

[Anonymous]

Can anyone provide a cost estimate?

[Anonymous]

$15,000-100,000 it just depends on the way you do it and how much you can spend. If you get lucky quickly and not a lot of birthparent expenses, its probably on the lower end. If you don't get lucky early, you can easily spend $60,000 and not adopt.

[Anonymous]

Another recommendation for Jennifer Fairfax. I have heard her present at adoption workshops and have met several of her clients, all extremely happy with the service she provided.

There is a DMV area non-profit called Families for Private Adoption (FPA) which provides education and support to those pursuing domestic independent adoption. FPA surveyed its new parents in 2012 to get answers to the time and cost questions. The median answer for cost was in the range $20 to $25K, and the median answer for time was 12 months. (By definition for many it will cost more and take longer, and there is no guaranty of success). The survey write up is under the FAQ tab on ffpa.org.

Depending on your income level, there is the Adoption Tax Credit which offsets the costs of adopting, and is designed to encourage adoption.