[lizzi]

My husband and I are in Germany and have found someone who may want to let us adopt their baby(12 wks pregnant).
Do we find an attorney here in Germany or from the states?
What state do we need to go through if any?
How long does a homestudy take, how much does it cost?
How much does a back ground cost? How long does it take?
Any suggestions to help keep cost down?
Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks

[dkbw]

Hi

We are also a military family station in Italy and had some of your same questions, heres's what I know.

Contact your family support center they should be able to provide you with a list of license folks who can do your home study. It took about 6-8 weeks for ours to be done and cost us $800. which from what I've seen is not too bad.

Some of the home study things you have to do yourself. Like clearances from your state of residences. One for criminal clearance and one for child abuse/neglict. What state are you and your hubby from. We belong to two different states and both have different requirements to get the information. One was Texas the other California. If you have either of those states let me know and I'll send you the specifics that I have.

Have you contacted the legal office to see if they would help, they probably won't. Some things they just don't want to get involved in. Is the birth mother active duty? What state does she belong too?

Since you already found a birth mother that's great, sometimes that's the hardest part. We are waiting to be matched with a bmom. We already had one match fail.

I know that adoption is an emotional roller coaster at times and adding the military and being overseas makes the ride even wilder.




In case you don't know, the military has an adoption reimbursment of $2000. that you can get after the adoption is final. The IRS has the tax credit of 10,000 so keep all your records of expenses.

Good luck if you want to e-mail me or PM me I would like to offer my support in any way I can. One military spouse to another.

Good luck
Dawn