Estimating the Cost

The costs of an international adoption vary greatly depending on the agency you use, the range of services provided, the country from which you adopt your child, the cost of travel, present exchange rates for the U.S. dollar, and a host of other factors.

The average cost for international adoption services in 2002 was between $18,000 and $30,000, which included agency fees, dossier and immigration fees, as well as the orphanage donation, legal work, and travel. The only way to get a firm handle on what an adoption will cost is to keep track with a sheet of estimated expenses. Whatever the figure you arrive at, the amount will be trifling in comparison to the costs of actually raising the child. (The Department of Agriculture predicts that a family with a child born in the year 2001 will spend $169,921 to raise that child over the next 17 years.)

Although an international adoption agency should be able to provide exact figures for costs such as the agency’s international processing fee and the foreign program fee, other costs such as document preparation and travel may vary considerably according to the adoptive parents’ individual situation and the country from which they are adopting. For example, a single or a couple in Pennsylvania who adopt through a U.S.-based international agency in Texas will know ahead of time what the pre- and post-adoption fees will be for their adoption agency in Pennsylvania. However, the costs of obtaining their certified documents and getting them translated, notarized, and verified and authenticated or apostilled, will differ, since a typical single will have fewer documents than a married couple who were both previously divorced.