financial question

[momccm]

Pat, I frequently post on the adoption mentoring board and they suggested I send my question over here. I really can not post all the details about our case but here is the short version.

We have a foster baby that has been in our care 90% of his life. We recently hired an attorney to help deal with some unexpected issue that have come up on our road to adopting. I am trying to not give details here....basically when we first hired the attorney we were given an estimate of the cost, now the expected cost, unless somehow mediation happens, will most likely double. It is not our attorney's fault but other issues that came up.

My question is are there any grants or anything out there that help families dealing with this kind of situation?

If you need more details I may can email you. I am just trying to not put too much out there.

thank you!

[Pat Johnston]

Momccm, I'm afraid I have never run across any grant sources for covering legal costs in fost-adopt cases.

Without knowing any details, I can tell you that because fostering-to-adopt situations are always legally tenuous given that the state's first responsibility (and would-be adopters are expected to accept this) is to try reunify children with birthparents first, genetic family members second, and only then unrelated adopters. If the state has decided that the child you have been fostering is going to go to relatives, it becomes very costly to fight that decision and the odds are stacked against the foster family. Bottom line is that the law is set to believe that genes trump attachment to other caregivers.

The only way times that the odds can be favorable to foster parents is when the state has chosen a different, previously unknown and unrelated to the child. In those cases, a judge can very often be convinced that moving a child from a set of unrelated caregivers to whom he is attached to a set of would-be adopters he doesn't know at all is not in the child's best interests.

I'm so sorry tht you are going through this.

[momccm]

Thank you!

I didn't figure there was anything out there.

We have been told our case if very unusual. Everyone, including CPS wants him to stay wtih us there just seems to be one very determined attorney in the mix that is fighting everything.

I appreciate your input.

[Pat Johnston]

Is the "one attorney" the guardian ad litem for the child or does he/she represent someone else who wants to adopt the child?

A GAL has a lot of influence, but unless there are family adopters in the wings, if the state wants you to adopt this child, the judge is likely to follow their lead--unless there is something about YOU that the GAL can pull out of a hat! Surely not.