My husband's cousin is an Illegal from Honduras. She had a son born here and is neglecting it and can't take care of him. He is 4 and she wants to send him to Honduras to live with her elderly poverty stricken mother who is also raising her firts son whom she abondened 6 years ago to come to the US. I think this is awful and want to help the child living here since I can't help the one in Honduras. We offered to adopt this child when she was pregnant with him but she wanted an "anchor baby" and said no. Now that she can't care for it we are thinking of placing the offer on the table again but I don't know how it would work legally since she is an illegal and he is not. Does anyone have any info that would help us find out if this would be possible?

When I was in law school, I worked on several cases which involved step-parent adoptions. The rule was that we did not forgive past due child support in exchange for the biological father (or sometimes mother) to agree to termination of their parental rights, because my supervising attorney said that you could construe this as exchanging money for a child and that's illegal.

So can't you make the argument that when adoption agencies charge excessive fees, this is selling children and therefore illegal? I don't understand how this is legal if forgiving past due child support (which is usually much less) is considered a sale of a child. It seems like people are profiting off these children. Why do we even have the law if people can disobey it? Any thoughts?
I agree that some of it is for the service, but some agency fees are so high, it's hard to believe that it's all for the service. I was under the impression that legal fees were in addition to the agency fee, but I could be wrong.
The fact that the fee is often based on income suggests to me that it really isn't based on the hours of service they provide at all.
Joslin: Thanks for sharing, you make some good points. Please don't be offended by my question, I am curious about the issue and I welcome comments from both sides. No, it's definitely not a crime to help people, but it IS a crime to traffic children for financial profit, and I think there is a fine line in these situations between what is right and wrong. Perhaps we need some mechanism in place so that corrupt agencies can be held accountable.

i want to adopt a pet that i can play with but doesnt need vacination cuz i think that cost a lot. NO FISH. NO HORSE. NO HAMSTER OR RAT. NO REPTILE. and it has to be cute n furry
I JUST CHECKED OUT FERRET AND CHINCHILLA. THEY ARE SCARY!!!!!!

I'm looking to adopt my child to a nice caring family, i cant find any infomation online regarding whether i can choose who the baby goes to or not. Is it possible to find a nice family i can have an open adoption with rather then some anonymous ppl i wouldnt approve of??

Are there any bad ones that you would not recommend? I live in the US.

Ok, say I meet a child while I am on a mission trip or something out of the country and fall in love with him/or her and feel like I need to adopt them into my family due to their extremely unfortunate circumstances. This child would obviously NOT be registered through an adopting agency. I'm wanting to know what steps that I would need to take to gaining custody of this child. I'll take links! Thank you, this is very important to me.

I have been wanting to either start one or volunteer at one but i cant find any information on it.

i thought adopting a pet was supposed to be alot cheaper than buying from a breeder but when i was looking on the petsmart website most of the fees were 350$, we got our dogs from breeders and each time it was free [friends], except for one dog that was 150. so, how much is it to adopt a pet in your area?
lol nah my family aren't too keen about the AKC, but thanks for the extra info.

all info relevant to my interests

hub and i weren't blessed with children and are considering adopting a newborn from within the USA, anyone know of any good adoption agencies, i have heard some horror stories, so we are skeptical…….
thanks

What do you think about adoption? We already have one biological daughter, so if we adopted another child (possibly older and from South Africa) do you think the child would experiance jealousy?
My husband and I really want an adopted child to be part of our family, but after we had our first child, we realized an adopted child could feel jealous about our daughter.
What do you think? Should we still investigate adoption? There are so many children out there that need help.
Thanks for the first answer..but my daughter is a newborn. She can't talk yet…so I can't ask her.