financing your legal battle--long!

Hi, What a tough situation. One thing you said was "We were advised by DCS to hire a lawyer so we did.". I think you need to go back to them and tell them THEY need to hire the lawyer. In my State the Foster Parents do not have ANY legal rights whatsoever to Foster Kids. They can't even be granted "interested party status". All the rights and financial obligations are with the State. If they feel the children need to be in the US and need to be adopted THEY need to pay for it. The Foster parents here do not pay a single penny in legal fees all the way through finalization. You also said "We filed an adoption petition under the 'assumption' we do not need bio parents permission due to abadonment/unfit to parent.". I don't see how filing this could cost six thousand dollars. It sounds like you are investing money into other aspects of this case. Let the governement of Mexico and the US government fight it out between themselves. It may mean you are foster parents instead of adoptive parents for a much longer time but it will not cost anything. There isn't a thing you can do legally that the State can't do for free. Put it back on your caseworker now. Get your leftover monies BACK from the attorney. Also, check into adoption tax subsidy for the money you have spent. You may be able to use that as a deduction on this years taxes. I also wouldn't discuss this with the kids too awful much. It's a grown up process that's very complicated. It could take many years for this to work it's way thru the courts. You also said "I'm just worried we are going to run out of money and have to drop our petition..and our attny is not sure DCS has a strong enough case to win their TPR w/o our case of trying to prove abandonment." A lawyer raking in 200 bones per hour WOULD tell you that "your" case is needed too to prove abandoment. It's in her best interest to do that. DCS needs to take over the ENTIRE process as they are in custody of the kids. You guys need to get off this bandwagon and let the State do it's job. If the final determination is between the Dad and the Mexican Governement you can throw your life savings and future into this and it won't matter a bit. You will only end up in debt. I have a suspicion that the reason this is so difficult to "win" is because the Dad's past crimes do not equate to a sentence of loosing his three kids. It's a pretty serious deal to take his kids from him forever. It sounds like you are pretty deeply involved in this if you have contact with the Dad's bio family in Mexico. I would tread lightly and hope that you can at least have contact with the kids if the two countries decide to allow them back with their Dad. Nan

Hi Lakin11, This is a tough one for most of us. We did everything: moved, yard sales, worked O/T, borrowed, family, - anything and everything we could. We are still battling the finances. I wish I could give you an easy answer. Every $100 we came up with was a blessing. I'm not sure we'll ever be able to pay everyone back - but we are still working O/T and saving where we can. Best wishes for you and these babies.

We are going through this. Keep up the fight. We were fortunate and had a good bit stored up in our retirement accounts. We're both relatively young so we went for it. We have put $10,000 in so far and spent plenty of other money. If we run out before things are finished, we will be borrowing heavily from my mother. Luckily, most people are pretty understanding about fighting for your kids. The only thing worse than the money though has been the emotional stress on our family. We have been doing this nine months. We're starting to crack emotionally. Trying to parent under this kind of strain is so hard. I'm pretty good with public records research at this point. Do you know everything about the father's history? Amy

Amy, this is true with me as well. The emotional stress is unimaginable. Read some of StacyKelly2 posts as she has done a great job of putting into words the anguish this puts us, as parents, through. lakin11 - I thought of another thing we did. My friends and co-workers put together a HUGE (and I mean HUGE) yard sale. Someone knew someone who knew someone who had an open area right at the busiest intersection in our city and we even had vans donated to us to help us bring everything. $6,000.00!!!!!! Can you believe it? So many people pitched in and helped that it brought me to tears many times. We even had people who knew people that got us free advertising and a lot of people who just stopped by and donated money. This was three years ago and I will always remember the generosity of so many.

Yes the emotional toll on family and friends is hard. We've had the kids for close to 17 months now...our friends and family are soooo attached to them. To my parents, they ARE their grandkids! Its so hard for them to not know whats going on and not see the courts moving fast enough, etc. Its really hard to know that we put them in these situations of loving these kids who may leave us. We chose to foster and love doing it, but we've laid this burden on their hearts as well. I know my whole family and friend support system will be crushed if we loose the kids...and that weighs on my heart heavily too.