Adoption Lawyers- Use/Don't Use??

...but I think it is a good idea for you to have your own lawyer who will represent YOUR rigths and make certain that all the t's are crossed & i's are dotted! In our case, we had a lawyer, our agency has a lawyer, and our birthmom had a lawyer (of course, WE paid for all three). Good luck!

I know this is late, but hopefully my advice will help someone reading this forum. My story is regarding the finalization process. We live in MA, but adopted a baby from Maine. We met the birth mother and father at the hospital. (This was an open adoption.) The baby was an obvious mix of the two (biracial), so there was no question of paternity... the mother warned us there was a slight chance of a secondary father. But the baby's features ruled that out. We told all this to a Boston attorney, referenced by our agency from Maine. The attorney insisted that we get a paternity test. When we hesitated, he went through horrible (and ridiculously absurd) stories of how we could lose the baby, for example if the mother set up another boy years later to claim he was the father. He kept pushing the notion of insurance against such an emotional event. (Sure, this *could* happen, and he had my wife spooked, but we *could* be struck by lightening too which seemed about as likely as the crazy scenarios he was spinning.) Despite my push-back, the lawyer recited additional horror scenarios (not true stories, just scenarios). He was basically reading a script! He was also softening us up for his fees of approximately $3,000, claiming a maze of paperwork to be filed in MA. I looked it up on the MA government web site. There was a very simple two-page form for finalization! That's it. The fields were names, and dates, etc. It didn't require a law degree, that's for sure. I complained to our adoption agencyŅ I didn't see why the agency's lawyer wouldn't be able to help with such a common process. Well, they did help! :-) The found out that we could legally finalize in Maine, at no cost at all! (Maybe there was a $50 state filing fee, I can't remember, but it was basically nothing compared to the $3,000 pushed by the MA lawyer.) My advice: be very, very, wary of lawyers who specialize in adoption. Their best interest is served only when they find reasons to charge you fees!! Question their advice at each step if things start to smell fishy, move on! The Boston lawyer happened to be a high profile guy who holds free seminars/meetings that probably seem innocentŅ I wouldn't be surprised if those meetings included lots of horror stories to artificially drum up business for himself. I deal with several lawyers for my business, and I've never had a problem. So I wasn't looking for trouble. I've never had such a bad experience as this. (Bad enough to motivate me to write about it for you years later! ;-)