[nostromo]

Hey HN: (while we're discussing family law) someone please make a startup that improves adoptions and/or surrogacy.

The fees are intense. $20k, 50k, 100k gets dropped left and right in this space. (Never underestimate the human drive to reproduce!) Most of that goes to agencies (who do good work, but incredibly inefficiently) and to foreign governments (if international). All to adopt kids that need a good home.

Navigating these waters is intense and difficult. There are so many hucksters, scams, multiple government bureaucracies, lawyers, clinics, and way too many options to make sense of things. It's a nightmare.

This is my pain point right now; I'll be your first customer!

Regardless, congrats to Wevorce for taking on family law.

[mrkurt]

I heartily recommend becoming a foster parent through your state children/family services agency. It's an oft overlooked route to adoption and, despite a million frustrations of its own, has worked much better for us than private adoption seems to/would have.

[ajtaylor]

My wife and I took this route in Massachusetts. We were VERY lucky from the start and quickly had a baby placed in our home on the "adoption" track rather than "reunification". It was a long road due to legal issues with the birth mother, but the end result was an adoption with $0 in legal fees paid by us. In fact, during this time the state considered us foster parents and we got a small subsidy every month.

If you have more time than money, the foster care route is definitely a good option. Plus, there are a LOT of kids in foster care waiting for a permanent home.

[ajju]

I have no experience, so please excuse this if it's insensitive, but isn't the difference between adopting and being a foster parent the fact that as a foster parent you are only a temporary guardian for the child? i.e. they usually have parents they would go back to eventually?

[mrkurt]

Not insensitive at all. Fostering is just the first step, and can be followed by a formal adoption. Our three adoptions were foster for ~2 years as the case made its way through the courts (we got all the kids at <1mo old).

Depending on the situation, kids can go back with their biological parents. The social worker should be pretty up front about the prospects of that, though. Of the 5 kids we've fostered, 2 went back to their parents and we were well aware of that before we took them (they were 3 and 6 years old). Usually when infants are removed from a home, there's not much chance of them returning.

[ajju]

Thank you for sharing. I have thought about adoption and it helps to learn more.

Both adopting and fostering are a huge responsibility, and it speaks volumes about you guys that you have done it multiple times.

[kajecounterhack]

I am not certain but I think being a foster parent you can decide to permanently adopt the child after a period of time, thus he calls it an "overlooked route to adoption."

[Jplenbrook]

It's called Fost-adopt in our state. When a child is taken from a home they have to put them somewhere. If you let them know you want to adopt then they will give you children with a very high chance of never being able to return to the parents. Instead of paying for adoption you get paid. Up to about $1,500/mo pre-adoption.

[callmeed]

Its funny you say that, my wife and I recently went to a local adoption seminar and the entire time all I could think of was "Wow, this process seems incredibly broken and in need of some technology-based efficiencies" ... I think it would take a startup comprised of an existing agency + attorney(s) + hackers but I totally agree with you. Sprinkling some crowd-funding could also be possible here.

[dugmartin]

These folks are doing crowd funding for adoptions. I heard about it on the Techzing podcast:

http://adopttogether.org/

[kentlyons]

Having gone through the adoption process successfully twice, I've thought a bit about what it might mean to create a product that could help here. One challenge is that adoption is very local and distributed. The homestudy and post placement processes don't seem like obvious areas where you could make incremental improvements to the current system.

There could be something in a service to help with adoption profiles. There's a lot of parts to that process that could be facilitated. I also wonder if parts of the education process (eg several of the mandatory parenting, etc. classes) could be put online.

[flexie]

Here is some interesting statistics on adoption and costs:

http://www.statisticbrain.com/adoption-statistics/

[kanzure]

Regarding surrogacy, do you have any links you can drop? Also, if I have some modified embryos will any of the services accept these?