eli5: When you adopt a child, why do you have to pay so much money?

Question

This was a question I had back when I was in elementary school. I had asked my mom but she had no clue. In my little brain I thought it was wrong to buy children, but now I’m wondering if that’s not actually the case. What is that money being spent on?

In: Economics

Answer 1

Short answer: Adoption is a legal process and therefore involves attorneys. Attorney fees are exorbitantly expensive.

Long answer: Private adoptions from an adoption agency, especially one that is bringing a child to the U.S. can be very expensive because it is essentially two court cases. First, is an immigration case. Second is an adoption. Depending on the state, the adoptive parents need an attorney, but so does the child. And they can’t be the same attorney. Estimated cost of an attorney is $300 per hour. With no less than 10 billable hours spent by each attorney, you are looking at no less than $6,000 just in attorney fees. Add in the cost of social workers, medical professionals, any fee charged by the adoption agency, travel, etc. and the average cost of a private adoption in my state comes to $60,000.

In law school they taught us that adoptions are so expensive because there is a tremendous amount of state oversight and due process for what could be characterized as the legal sale of a child from one parent to another (your little brain was in the right place) and de facto termination of the parental rights of the biological parents. As you can imagine there are a lot of ways that transaction can go wrong and the state has a huge interest in ensuring kids are safe and that everyone involved receives due process.

Because of the financial barriers many people do not adopt, but there is a path to adoption that doesn’t cost so much. Namely, volunteering as a foster parent. Foster parents who have a child in their home for a year or more can petition the court to adopt the foster child. All of the attorney fees are paid by the state, and the process is expedited because the child is already in their home.

As an attorney who practices family law, their is nothing better than being in the courtroom when an adoption is finalized. Every day I see families broken apart by the court, but on those days I get to see one put together.