Anyone have any experience with adoption?

[AndrewR]

One note on the money: There's a $10,000 adoption tax CREDIT (not deduction, meaning you reduce your tax payment by $10,000) for adoption which helps a great deal in paying for the process. The credit is payable over several years, in case you don't make over $100,000 (we certainly don't). There's talk of raising that amount to $15,000 -- why these idiot politicians don't include inflation adjustments to these laws is beyond me.

Many businesses also offer adoption benefits, and the military has a $2,000 payment which we can apply for when the adoption is final. There may be a comparable benefit in civilian government service.

Originally posted by: desiplaya4life

Originally posted by: AndrewR

Originally posted by: OS
I have read some articles about the poor baby girls that get abandoned when they are born in China, so i was thinking in passing in a couple years i might adopt one. Is anyone here adopted, have adopted or close to the subject?

My wife and I are awaiting our referral from China so we can go get our little girl, probably in November. I could answer any specific questions you may have, but you may also want to take a look at our webpage (see my profile) which has some information that my wife put together.

You don't need a lawyer for the international adoption process (you generally do for domestic, as I understand it), but you do need a good adoption agency, which is the key to a successful and the least painful process. Being geographically close to the agency is not a factor (we're in Japan, if that tells you anything) so pick on reputation, not proximity. Though we only this one experience to base off of, we highly recommend our agency, Families Through International Adoption (FTIA), based out of Evansville, IN. They have an excellent reputation and have been fantastic in working with us given the difficulties of being overseas while trying to accomplish everything (incidentally, we don't get money or anything else for recommending anyone!). Their website is here.

must be nice living in a high-tech city

I live in Okinawa, not the mainland. It's VERY different from Tokyo or Osaka. This is only nominally Japan as the original locals are not Japanese (there's a lot of mainlanders here now as well as descendants of mixed marriages). This is kind of like a cross between Hawaii and the poor parts of Appalachia.

 

[thedarkwolf]

My sister is Korean but she was adopted over 20 years ago so I can't remember much of it. There is no way in hell it cost my parents $50k though cause they wouldn't have been able to afford it.