Price of parenting: Who ever said love don't cost a thing?
Price of parenting: Who ever said love don't cost a thing?

The couple who adopted Crystal Drwenski's newborn daughter seven years ago had been parents for one week, she said, when the Oklahoma County law firm handling their adoption billed them an additional $15,000 they weren't counting on.

They'd already paid $15,000.

"That was a hard thing for me to hear,” Drwenski said. She said she claimed minimal expenses as birth mother and didn't realize the adoptive parents were billed hourly for time the caseworker spent with or talking to her.

"(The $30,000) gave me an awful feeling,” she said.

Drwenski learned of the costs through an exchange of e-mails with her daughter's adoptive mom. What began as a closed adoption with letters and pictures exchanged via the attorney's office evolved into an open one with bimonthly e-mails and semi-annual visits.

"I tell people I had a really successful adoption, despite my attorneys,” Drwenski said.

The 28-year-old Oklahoma City woman now runs her own public relations firm and is a columnist for Adoption Today magazine.

A year ago a state grand jury criticized Oklahoma County adoption judges as "indifferent or grossly incompetent” in overseeing adoption costs. Jurists said birth mothers essentially had been allowed to sell their children.

That means some Oklahoma County attorneys who practiced adoption had basically been allowed to buy children — on behalf of adoptive parents — by paying birth mothers in hidden expenses with cars and vacations, among other things.

The scathing report was news to many attorneys in northeastern Oklahoma when Supreme Court Justice Marian Opala shared it at an Oklahoma Bar Association adoption law seminar in May in Tulsa.

"When I read the report, my eyes popped,” Tulsa attorney Bobbie Callahan Freeberg said. Among the adoptions she's handled in her 26 years of practice, the most she's charged in legal fees is $5,000.

Nationwide, costs are lower than $20,000 in 64.6 percent of domestic newborn adoptions, according to a 2005 survey by Adoptive Families Magazine. In Oklahoma County, they averaged $26,838 in 2005 and 2006, according to the county public defender's office. The high was $34,000.

Among the county's estimated 10 adoption agencies and law firms, costs vary wildly, said attorney Chris Venters of the public defender's office.

"The very same service can be $10,000 more at one place than another,” he said.

Since the grand jury report, his office has been called to audit all adoption cases before court approval.

At the May seminar, Venters shared the lectern with Rogers County District Judge Sheila Condren on the topic of ethical adoption expenses.

"We think the proper range for adoptions should be $15,000, including a maximum of $6,000 in legal fees,” Venters said.

Among other things, his office is encouraging itemization of legal and placement fees versus simply listing a flat fee; and for birth mother expenses, a cap of $350 for maternity clothes; $550 for monthly rent, and receipts for food.

Despite objections, Oklahoma County judges still are allowing diapers and day care expenses for birth mothers' older children.

Meanwhile, Condren is asking adoption agencies and firms to disclose and detail all costs, even those below $500 and not paid directly to the birth mother.

"The intention is transparency,” Condren said. "We need to be satisfied all expenses are disclosed, all are reasonable and there's been no expectation, solicitation, offer, payment or transfer of anything of value, including free representation in an unrelated criminal case.”

Condren closed her comments with word that some adoption firms have bought apartment complexes and are having birth mothers live there.

As executive director of Deaconess Home and Adoption Services, Dierdre McCool fields frequent calls from birth mothers she calls "shoppers.”

"What kind of expenses do you cover?” or "What can you pay me?” they'll ask. Deaconess pays no more than $500 in birth mother expenses. It and other adoption agencies are licensed by the state Department of Human Services, which audits them twice a year. Conversely, attorneys are audited only by the courts.

As president of the Oklahoma Adoption Coalition, McCool is all too familiar with the fraud in the industry. Concerns discussed and noted by the coalition include large amounts of money being given to birth mothers on Wal-Mart gift cards.

"That money could be spent on beer or cigarettes instead of for food and living expenses, as the adoption code allows,” she said.

Potential adoptive parents often are afraid to question expenses, McCool said.

"They feel that if they ask questions, it will in some way disqualify them for a baby,” she said. But the couples who don't question are those who face the biggest risks, McCool said.

Veronica Franks, who helps license adoption agencies for DHS, encourages prospective adoptive parents to call her office (521-3561) to check if there have been any substantiated complaints on agencies or law firms.

Meanwhile, Oklahoma County Public Defender Bob Ravitz believes the best way to keep adoption costs down is to make costs — attorney fees at the very least — public record. Currently, adoption cases are closed to protect privacy.

"We can keep the names of birth mothers and adoptive parents private,” Ravitz said. "But as long as the cases are done in private, the public can't put pressure on attorneys.”

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