There are some things that people don’t think about when they are considering adoption. First people think adoption is super expensive and they just stop there and don’t consider it because of the cost. Some agencies and foreign adoptions are very expensive. I can say that we did not pay anything for our children’s adoptions. We adopted a sibling group so the state of Texas actually helps pay the legal costs for the adoption. They will also do this if you choose a special needs adoption, special needs does not always mean physically disabled. This term also covers children over the age of three, or of a minority group. Our children actually went under the special needs category.
In the state of Texas if you adopt a special needs child you also are able to get Medicaid to help cover the medical, vision and dental needs of your child. Some children also are eligible for payments from the state to help cover the care until they turn 18.
Another great benefit of adopting in Texas is that if your child was in the foster care system they also pay for them to go to college! That is one of the best extra benefits they have.
There are also some paperwork types things that you need to do when you adopt a child. You will get a new birth certificate with your names on it with you listed as the parents. So when you complete the forms for a new birth certificate you need to consider if you want to change their first, middle or last names. For us we changed everyone’s middle and last name and for Rebecca we changed the spelling of her first name.
When our new birth certificates arrived our next stop was to go to the Social Security Office to get the kids all new social security numbers. The reason for this is in case the birth parents have their original social security numbers they can use those to track your children or even get credit in the kids names.