[buckeet]

My husband and I are new to the world of adoption. We have two biological kids and would like to welcome in a new member. My husband has always wanted to adopt, and after two difficult pregnancies, we are ready to take a different route to parenthood. We have decided to adopt an African American baby for many reasons. Unfortunately, money is tight.

How much did it cost to adopt your sweet AA baby?? And what agency did you love?? ( pm me, please

Thanks for the help!!

[sugarandspice697]

My partner and I adopted our son (who is half African American and half Caucasian) from foster care several months ago. He was about 5 months old when he was placed with us. In my experience, if your willing to be patient and flexible, foster care is a great choice and the cost of very minimal (we paid around 2K). The only downside to foster care is that most of the children are a bit older (8 years old and up) unless your open to a child with some legal risk. With a legal risk situation, the children are place in your home for several months but the birthparent has the opportunity to be reunited with their child if the state allows it. However, once the parental rights of the birth parent has been terminated, you can proceed to adopt the child legally.

We used the state DSS office for our process. Every state has one and they do nearly everything for free.

[Sleeplvr]

Sugarandspice

They didn't reimburse you for the out of pocket fees? We got everything we spent back. Just remember you get to claim the entire adoption credit for adopting from foster care even though you may have spent nothing. You also get a $2000 tax credit every year until the child turns 18 in the state of Georgia.

[millie58]

sending you a pm

[sugarandspice697]

Oh yeah... we were reimbursed for our fees. I forgot to add that... I made sure we received every last cent for this adoption. lol

[millie58]

Buckeet, you need to clean out our pm's so I can send you one.

[ubringmejoy]

Are their any children in the DCFS who parents rights have already been terminated? I don't want to be in a situation where i have to go back and forth to court and risk losing a child i have bonded with, i rather avoid that scenario completely.

[sugarandspice697]

Originally Posted by ubringmejoy

Are their any children in the DCFS who parents rights have already been terminated? I don't want to be in a situation where i have to go back and forth to court and risk losing a child i have bonded with, i rather avoid that scenario completely.

Yes, you can adopt children from foster care without fostering them. However, most of the children that have their rights already terminated by the courts tend to be a bit older. In our state, most of the children are 9 years old and up. There are a few children that are younger but they tend to be apart of large sibling groups or have more involved special needs.
If you want a baby without fostering, I would recommend you consider traditional domestic infant adoption.

[catnap]

We have the same question as the original poster - we are looking to do DIA rather than foster and would really appreciate any advice via PM.
Thanks

[Sleeplvr]

Most states do not like to create legal orphans so in most cases they will not terminate rights until after an adoptive family has been identified. So keep in the back of your mind those situations you run across where they rights have already been terminated. The situations the kids were in were probably pretty bad. It really helps to keep an open mind about legal status... the state can give you a legal risk assessment for that child. It will state the chances of termination or reunification. You can ask for low legal risk or find a child whose TPR is pending the identification of an adoptive family.