How rich do you have to be to adopt?

Question

I love, love, love the idea of adopting a child but all the research I have done says it costs around 20 to 30 thousand dollars! Is that right? Do people take out "adoption loans" to pay the fees?

Answer 1

You don't have to be rich, you have to be smart.

Answer 2

I'm in a rush so very quickly - you can adopt from your state's foster system for next to nothing. You will likely adopt an older child but the fees are minimal and certainly below the adoption tax credit.

Re. the adoption tax credit, if your adjusted gross income is under $175K or so you will get a $10K tax credit when you adopt. Also more and more employers are offering adoption benefits to their employees.

And yes, it is possible to get a loan for the fees.

However, saving the money needed to cover adoption fees is a very good way to prepare for parenthood. If you're not able to save up the money in a year or two you may not be in a position to add a child to your family to begin with.

update --- if you want to get answers, you'll have to ignore the nonresponsive rants from the anti adoption crowd.

Answer 3

they have special loans you can get for it. Or you can refinance  your house and pull 20,000 out or you can do a fund raising, your church might help. IMO i think that spending 20 to 30,000 to adopt is ridiculous! I've heard people say "you'll spend 20,000 for a car, whats the difference?" I bet they picked up that line from an adoption agency.

Those agencies are PIMPS! I do feel as if it's kinda morally wrong. Foster care is a much less expensive way and the kids arent being pimped out like infants with a price over their head. The foster kids really need a home and they are usually separated from their parents for better reasons

Answer 4

im not american but i dnt think its the case ov bein rich, its your income and how well you would b able to cope and u have to show if you have money to support the child

Answer 5

Loans, or a very novel idea is getting a job and saving, that seems to work pretty slick.

But adopting from foster care is typically much cheaper, like a few hundred bucks, just pay court filing fees and get your homestudy done and you're set.  But then of course you're not guaranteed a shiny new baby, so it's a toss-up.

You know as an adopted person, I love love love the idea of having my own, original, unaltered birth certificate, but unfortunately no amount of money in the world will allow me to have that.

The price I have to pay for being adopted I guess.

Well that, and losing my mother, father, full brother, half sister, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins....

*sigh*

ETA:  Me?  Angry?   No, not really.  But you seem to be, wow, such nastiness in your tone.  Why are you so vicious for such a happy PAP?  

Will you berate your future adoptee like that, I wonder?

Answer 6

i adopted 2 boys it didn,t cost that much

do an other search

Answer 7

Yes, there are "loans" to get a baby.  

Most people adopting are far from rich. They are just richer than the women losing their children.

My neighbor actually "adopted?" a child by getting a 2nd mtg. and using credit card advances, transferring the balance back and forth to new cards with 0% balance transfers. Now that finance companies  are tightening up he's about to lose his house because he can't make the mortgage pymts on the house that he couldn't afford in the first place.  

Yep, a better life for the child.

Eta: If you were talking about foster care than you wouldn't be complaining about the 20-30,000.

Answer 8

actually in many state across the country you can be jobless and on wealthfair  and make thousands of dollars of tax free money a month taking in special needs children...  

and yet other state don't allow that

here and actually in just about every state, the law about adoption basically is you have to be making above poverty rate... and enough I think it is 200% above poverty rate, to not qualify for government assistance

every type of adoption besides foster care adoption costs tens of thousands of dollars...

some groups do place at very low costs with groups within their faith.. (Jewish, Catholic, etc..)

others have a good deal of luck begging for money from others to pay for the adoption

and then if you are the prefect Barbie Christian couple you can get some grants

but you probably can't get a loan unless you could have gotten a personaly loan anyway

  

Answer 9

You mentioned that your interest is in adopting from foster care.  That can be done for a very nominal amount of money.  The large fees that you are seeing are agency fees that usually correlate to infant adoptions or international adoptions.

Adopting from our foster care system makes sense, since so many children are in foster care and run the risk of aging out of the system.   With any adoption, there are the issues of loss that may affect the child.  It's good to learn about that and be prepared.  

Lillie is right about the birth certificate issue.  Prior to an adoption, even though the child's parents may have given them up or the parental rights have been terminated, the child has the right to access his or her own factual birth certificate.  That right remains unless an adoption occurs.  Following the finalization of an adoption, that right is lost in 44 states.  If you do decide to adopt, be sure to have a copy of his or her original birth certificate that s/he can have later if s/he would like.  Getting adopted should not take away a right that all other citizens have.

As far as wealth, one does not need to be wealthy in order to be an adoptive parent.  My parents didn't have a lot when they adopted me.  We lived in a small apartment where I slept on a cot.  They only owned one car, and it was a bit older.  Although these circumstances changed with time, having financial wealth is not a requirement to be parent, even an adoptive parent.

Answer 10

I'm an Senior NCO in the military and my wife is a stay at home mom so you know I'm far from rich.  Our first adoption (our daughter was 8 months old at the time), technically an international adoption I guess, was done when we lived in India and by doing it from the country itself we avoided all of the money sucking middle men.  The whole thing, including the immigration visa, was about $1200.  Our second adoption, just completed, was of a 4 month old beautiful baby girl who we got at 4 days old.  It was done through our local foster to adopt program and was 100% free.

When we decided to adopt we knew that there would be costs involved and we were prepared to deal with that but we were blessed I guess by the way things worked out.  For those who assume that you must be rich to adopt or who think that it will cost a small fortune I say to do their research and look at the alternatives.  There are always ways to do things if it is important enough to you.