International adoption

Started by Homegrown Tomatoes, November 20, 2007, 05:49:03 PM

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Homegrown Tomatoes

This is way off the topic of home building... but has anyone out there adopted internationally?  Just curious about what agencies and about the costs.... I've read a lot online, but was curious as to stories straight from people who've done it.  I know, a random thing to thing about in the middle of being pregnant myself, but something I've always wanted to do.

peternap

#1
I have not! But...my wifes niece just adopted a child from the Former Soviet Union.
It was not a pleasant experience. Cost was around 75,000.00 and Americans are not well thought of. After 5 trips there, countless bribes (they call them goodwill gifts) and three postponed court dates, the judge told them she didn't like the Va state seal and they needed to have the state change it and come back in a month :o Unfortunately the state did not want to change the seal and on the next court date, the judge gave the child to a French couple.

She went to another province and after lots of help from the state Department and more bribes, adopted another child.

Oh...the entire process took about a year and a half.
These here is God's finest scupturings! And there ain't no laws for the brave ones! And there ain't no asylums for the crazy ones! And there ain't no churches, except for this right here!


Homegrown Tomatoes

How horrible... I have some friends who adopted not too long ago from Russia and had a really similar heartbreaking experience.  I don't know what it cost them when it was all added up, but I know it was a long and difficult process.  However, in the end when they got their little boy, I think they would have done it all over again... he even looks like them and will probably always be assumed to be their biological child.  There are a lot of people I know who adopt from China, too.  Maybe what provoked me to start this thread was that I read the other day that Guatemala is shutting down their adoptions out of country leaving some 3700 families in limbo... families who've already been matched to a child and were in process.  South Korea also has quit allowing overseas adoptions, which is really sad because there is such a stigma against adopting/being adopted there... over 80% of the kids who are in orphanages in Korea are never adopted, and most of them are perfectly healthy and intelligent kids... but in a lot of cases, the girls were given up because the family couldn't afford to raise more than one child, and they want that only child to be a boy.  I have some friends here who adopted through social services in the US and got both of their kids as newborns...they also spent a lot of money to adopt.  Then other friends who wanted to adopt through foster care, but after months of frustrations with the system and a little boy that they just could not handle (who was perfectly loveable, but didn't know how to be loved) they gave up and let him go back into the foster care system.  I felt so sorry for the little boy because his main crime was that his foster brothers were really close to his age, and there was some jealousy and competition on both sides.