The procedures and costs involved when you adopt a child through an agency.

Using an agency to manage your adoption can be helpful for a number of reasons. Agencies are experienced in finding children, matching them with parents, and satisfying the necessary legal requirements. Agencies will help adoptive parents with everything from finding a birth parent to finalizing the adoption papers. An agency will take care of many of the crucial elements of the adoption, such as conducting the home study, obtaining the necessary consents, and advising them on any specific state requirements.

Private vs. Public Agencies

The key advantage of a private agency adoption is the extensive counseling that agencies provide. Typically, counseling is available for adoptive parents, birth parents, and the children (if they are older). Careful counseling can help everyone involved weather the emotional, practical, and legal complexities that can arise throughout the adoption process. And it's particularly important for the protection is provides the adoptive parents. A birth parent who receives appropriate counseling early in the process is less likely to change her mind when it comes time to sign the actual consent forms after the baby's birth.

On the down side, private agencies are often extremely selective when choosing adoptive parents. This is because they have a surplus of people who want to adopt and a limited number of available children. Agencies weed out parents based on age, marital status, income, health, religion, sexual orientation, family size, and personal history (including criminal conduct).

Public agencies have many children ready to be adopted, but they are often older or special-needs children. If you want a newborn or an infant, a public agency may not be able to help you. And public agencies generally do not provide the many other services, such as much-needed counseling, that private agencies offer. Of course, along with offering fewer services, public agencies come at a much lower cost. It may cost you next to nothing to adopt through a public agency (and the agency may even provide a small stipend during the adoption process), whereas a private agency adoption will cost many thousands of dollars.

Even if you do use an agency, you will probably need to hire a lawyer to draft the adoption petition and to represent you at the hearing. Although there is no legal requirement that a lawyer be involved in an adoption, the process can be quite complex and should be handled by someone with experience and expertise. When seeking a lawyer, find out how many adoptions he or she has handled, and whether any of them were contested or developed other complications.

Cost of Agency Adoptions

Private agencies charge fees to cover the birth mother's expenses as allowed by state law; these expenses may include medical costs, living expenses during the pregnancy, and counseling. Add to this the agency's staff salaries and overhead -- and charges can mount up quickly.

Many agencies charge a flat fee for adoptions, while others add the birth mother's expenses to a fixed rate for the agency's services. Some agencies use a sliding scale that varies with adoptive parents' income levels, usually with a set minimum and maximum fee. You can expect to pay between $1,000 and $6,000 to adopt a young child, and $10,000 or more to adopt a newborn. Some agencies charge a lower rate for handling special needs adoptions.

Public agencies generally do not charge fees for placing children in adoptive homes.

Even if you use an agency, you may need to hire a lawyer to draft the adoption petition and to represent you at the adoption hearing. Although there is no legal requirement that a lawyer be involved in an adoption, the process can be quite complex. Attorney fees, of course, add to the cost of the adoption.

Waiting Periods

Agencies sometimes wait to place a child in an adoptive home until all necessary consents have been given and are finalized. Because of this, a child may be placed in foster care for a few days or weeks, depending on the situation and the state's law. The lag-time concerns many adoptive parents who want their child to have a secure, stable home as soon as possible. Some agencies get around this by placing infants immediately through a type of adoption known as a "legal risk placement." The risk is that the birth mother may decide she wants her child back before her rights have been legally terminated -- then the adoptive parents will have to let the child go.