Kathryn King
A child needs a good home with someone who loves her and will take care of her, but what happens when an adoptive family cannot be found by the time the birth mother is ready to give up her baby? Adoptive parents can certainly be paid, but this should never be their first priority.
Adoption is a legal process where a parent or parents, referred to as the adopters, take the child of another person and legally treat him/her as their own child. While adoption was once viewed primarily as a way for infertile couples or singles to become parents, adoption today serves many additional purposes, such as helping children who would otherwise be raised in state institutions.
In Singapore, depending on whether you adopt through an agency or independently, there are different procedures and fees that you will need to follow. Adoptions through agencies also differ from one agency to another, which means they can have different requirements and charges.
Here we give a guide on how much it costs to adopt in Singapore. Adoption lawyer fees in Singapore cost about S$14,000 to S$17,000. The adoption agency fee includes the following:
– Application Fee
– Home Study Fee (can be waived off if adopting an infant under six months or a child of single parentage 18 years and below)
– Registration Fee (as part of intercountry adoption)
– Consultation with Adoption Service Providers/Counseling sessions for prospective adoptive parents.
The application fee is usually non refundable. Depending on the type of adoption you are looking into, there may be additional charges that will need to be paid, such as medical expenses for treatment of the child, pre-adoption home study expenses, and visa/passport application fees.
Adopting an infant or child under six months costs about S$10,000 to S$14,000. This is because it will be cheaper for you to adopt a baby within this age range. This fee includes the following:
– Application Fee
– Home Study Fee (This can be waived off if adopting an infant under six months)
– Registration Fees (As part of inter-country adoption). These are often subsidized by the government.
Singapore Citizens who are adopting are entitled to government subsidies. The subsidies include:
- a) $3,500 under Section 4 Social Assistance
The fee compensates lawyers for their time spent on paperwork, referrals, etc., as well as other associated costs such as medical bills, advertising costs, administrative expenses. Otherwise, all these activities would have to come out of the pocket money provided by taxes or donations given directly to charitable organizations, which may not go very far at all if the volume of work upon them was high.
Law firms may take a lower fee from a birth mother if she cannot afford the total, which makes it great for families with tight budgets who cannot pay the full charged rate. This is also good for adoptive parents because costs will be lower, and therefore, there is more money available to match children in need of homes. In other cases, agencies take a high fee, knowing that their service will help many families at once.
In order to attract babies from birth mothers, some law firms reduce their fees drastically or even waive them entirely. The problem with this, though, is that they might go broke and not be able to work any longer due to no income, which would obviously mean they can’t do anything towards helping people adopt babies either then! Other adoption law firms will contain the fee to only the first child’s match. An adoption for multiple children, however, would need to include a higher fee than one involving just one birth mother and adoptive family.
