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With privte adoption your costs vary depending on the situation and the prevailing professiopnal costs in your area. I have herad of some private adoptiuons costing $500 and others costing $100,000. The average family spends between $10 and 18K. The factors the build in cost are:
Professional fees (homestudy, legal fees, Adoption Service Provider etc)
Birth parents expenses if they are needed. These can include living expenses for several months
Medical expenses. All expectant parents who have no medical insurance can be covered by Medicaid but ometimes there are snafus an you wind up coving prenatal and birth expenses.
Travel. If you need to travel out of state you have airfare, rental car and hotel. If you travel to a state where ICPC cant ake weeks to clear your costs go up.
We have done two indiendent adoptions (private doptions with lawyers) and one was well under $10k and the other was twice as much. The difference was travel expenses and the cost of having one one but two lawyers and two ASPs.
The big risk in independent adoptions are that unlike a flat fee agency if a match doesn't work out you can lose money. We have very little money to risk so we only went with situation where there were very few pre-birth expenses.
As to keeping in contact with the birth faily after placement that is something you need to work out with the birth family. Every situation is different and you can choose the level of contact you want, form none at all to frequent visists. In domestic adoption figure there is going to nbe at least some level of openness (contact) and the more flexible you can be the faster you will probably be matched. I would recommend some reading on open adoption before you rule it out completely. "The open Adoption Expereince" and "Children of Open Adoption" are both good books. I also recommend that you make sure there is a way to contact the birthfamily. You may think you want a completely cloesed adoption at first but you will be surprised to fiind you feel differently in a few months. If you don't get that info at the time of placement you may be out of l uck down the road.
We had a child with medical issues and a closed adoption. Our ds'sDrs could not even get medical questions answered in a non identifying way. I highly recommend there be some way for you guys to contact eachother even if it is thru an intermediary.
lisa
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