The Cost of Adoption

We've had several people ask what the cost of Maddox's adoption will be, so I wanted to take a minute to outline our costs.

But, I do also want to preface it by saying, when asking an adoptive family this question, please, please, please, please, please don't ever word this as "how much did he cost?" or "how much did you have to pay for him?". Children are not cars with a price tag attached to them. To us, this is nothing more than a "hospital bill" that a biological child would come with, except we don't have insurance to help cover the costs. Just in case you don't believe me, the guy that we purchase our insurance through told me just recently that they just had a baby and their hospital bill was $25,000 - although they were only out of pocket about $2,500. Unfortunately, adoption doesn't come with something like that. And, at least in the case of international adoption, we have to have everything paid for before we go get our child. We can't come home and make monthly payments on whatever is left. Yes, there are grants out there, but none of them are guaranteed - in fact, many families are probably denied for more than they're approved for. This is why you will see us having so many fundraisers. Because the other fact of adoption is, most families don't have $25,000+ sitting in their bank account.

The other reason I'm writing this post is to be transparent with you. We want people to know exactly where their money is going. If you've followed our story very long, you know that we had a failed adoption in 2013. LOTS of people gave money to help us bring Noella home. Unfortunately, we weren't able to complete her adoption. The agency we were with at the time though was gracious and refunded us almost all of our money (minus the cost to translate the dossier and application fee). So we did have more than most when we started this adoption.

With all that being said, here are the numbers for you:

The total cost to adopt from China is going to be about $35,800.

Thankfully, this is not all due up front. It is broken down into 4 payments of about $3,100 due at various stages throughout the process. These are what's considered the "adoption fees". We have 3 of these payments left.

Then we'll have some out-of-pocket expenses like our medicals, background checks, our USCIS forms, the Hague training we have to complete, certifications and visas.

Just to break those numbers down a little bit: We just got one set of medicals done for our LOI (Letter of Intent) and they ended up being around $575 apiece (did NOT see that one coming!). And we're going to have to get another set done for our dossier. We have to get a background check for every state we've lived in since we turned 18 - 3 states each = roughly $50 together. The USCIS forms (the I-800a and I-800) will be around $1,000 total (both are covered in this cost). There are several training hours we have to complete for a Hague adoption. For both of us to get through all of the training, it will cost around $500. And then the certifications (for all of the paperwork needed for our dossier) and visas will cost around $1,000.

The other large chunk we'll have due are our travel fees (these include flights and in-country accommodations and expenses). These will be due before we go pick Maddox up. That cost will be around $18,000 (flights will change this number - they've estimated about $4,800, but this number could go way up or down depending on what time of the year you travel). It's almost like a balloon payment. After our "adoption fees" are all paid, we will only have the travel fees left. And depending on how quickly our process goes, these could all come due pretty close together (it's not going to be 1 payment/expense due once per month).

Then after all of those fees, after we're home with Maddox, we'll have some post-adoption expenses.

Please be praying for our fundraisers. We've started 2 and so far they haven't done as well as we had hoped. We also can't apply for most of the grants until after our home study is complete. (And we're hoping it'll be done by the end of this month.) We've got several other fundraisers lined up and will announce them as soon as they start. We're going to try and do at least 1 big fundraiser ($1,000+) and 1 smaller one ($100+) every month.

We know that God will provide the funds needed to bring this little guy home. We just need to keep pushing ahead, one day at a time. These kiddos are so worth it, no matter the cost! They all deserve a family and a chance at life. Adoption has changed our family, in more ways than just the obvious. And now we can't imagine growing our family any other way! We're so grateful God called us to this! <3 p="">