Exactly what is Hauge?

I will try to answer your questions. The Hague Here is how I understand it. Hopefully someone will correct me if I am wrong: You will hear about "The Hague" in two different ways. The first refers to the shutdown of Guatemalan adoptions in 2003 when Guatemala was trying to adopt the Hague treaty (which is an international standard for adoptions). People who were adopting during that time were very worried that they would not be able to bring their children home and there was a lot of uncertainty during that time. Guatemala ended up deciding that these new standards were unconstitutional and so they threw the whole thing out and adoptions began moving again. The problem is that Guatemala never officially removed themselves from the Hague convention, so there is some debate as to whether or not they are a Hague country. The United States is a Hague country and part of their agreement is that they will not do adoptions from a Hague country that is not compliant - which is how they view Guatemala. Right now, the U.S. has said that they will halt adoptions from Guatemala in 2007 unless Guatemala becomes Hague compliant. Guatemala has not made any moves to fix this situation, so we all expect that adoptions from Guatemala will stop, at least for a while, in 2007. Most people assume that adoptions will start back up again eventually, but we don't know how long the wait will be. For those who are starting their adoptions from Guatemala right now, the general belief is that their adoptions will not be affected by this Hague stuff in 2007. But, if you don't plan to start the adoption process until 2007, you may find that you are not able to adopt from Guatemala at that time. We still don't know how all of it will work, but it is definitely a hot topic for all of us because there are those who are worried about getting done in time and then a lot of us had planned on adopting a second child from Guatemala and now we are wondering if we will be able to. Timelines and Cost Generally, I think that most international adoptions have the potential to take less time than a domestic infant adoption because you dont' have to wait for a birth mother to select you. For most countries if you don't hit any major problems, you probably can expect to have your child home within about a year from when you start the process (however, every case varies widely). As far as cost, I think it kind of depends. I have heard of domestic infant adoptions costing between $12,000- $30,000 or more, but this is not my area of expertise, so you would have to check on the domestic boards. For international adoption, it depends on the country. On the lower end of cost would be countries like Ethiopia or Liberia - the cost is somewhere around $10,000 - $12,000. But most other countries are going to be at least $20,000. Most of the people adopting from Guatemala are saying that by the time they finished their adoption they spent at least $25,000 and often closer to $30,000 or more. Good luck as you begin thinking about adoption. Feel free to PM me if you want to chat. We went through the infertility thing before deciding to adopt from Guatemala last year. ~Rachel