Adoption an enriching, but costly experience

By Janine Anderson

Friday, October 28, 2005 2:05 AM CDT

RACINE - Kymberlea Richtmyre calls it being pregnant on paper: This period between when she and her husband, Ed, have been assigned a baby to adopt, and when they can actually bring her home.

This is the second time the couple is adopting a girl from Guatemala. They expect to bring Sinise home sometime after Nov. 10, when they get the call that the adoption has been finalized and they can come pick her up.

Between now and then, they need to come up with about $10,000, the remaining portion of the fee to adopt Sinise from Guatemala. Sinise will join their older daughter, Anij, 3, when she arrives.

The Richtmyres are among a growing number of people turning to international adoptions to bring children into their homes. The couple has been married for 10 years, and they could not have children of their own. Ed has three adult sons from a previous marriage.

They are working with Adoption Choice, a Milwaukee adoption agency. Melinda Randa and Jill Gerlach started the company 20 years ago and have been doing international adoptions for 18 years. In that time, they have completed 1,400

adoptions.

Nationally, infertility is the top reason couples turn to adoption and many of them want infants or young children. It is much easier to adopt a baby or toddler from outside the country than within it.

"There are no domestic babies," Randa said. "I think out of 45 adoptions last year, we did three or four domestic. For each one that went through we probably worked with three birth mothers. One out of four go through."

Randa said people often get discouraged when they try to adopt within the country.

Penny Lyter and her husband, Jon Antonneau, are working with Adoption Choice for their international adoption. Like the Richtmyres, they were unable to have children of their own.

"We checked into the prospects of adopting within the states, but it looked like it was going to take a very long time," Lyter said. "I wanted the experience of having a baby or young child."

Lyter has never had children; her husband has two from a previous marriage.

Being able to bring home a baby or young child is one part of the decision to adopt internationally; another factor is the security of bringing a child home from outside the country.

"A lot of adoptive parents don't want the involvement of a birth mom," Randa said. "They want a more confidential adoption. A lot of birth mothers today in America are asking for some kind of involvement."

Easy access to much personal information in this country has made it easier for people to track down birth children or parents years later, Randa said. And for many adoptive parents, there is a fear that the birth mother or father may show up and try to reclaim the child.

"It's just a matter of somebody, of a couple, an adoptive parent, when they bring that baby home, they want to know that that's their baby, their child," Randa said. "You're not going to have somebody coming from the Ukraine or Guatemala to take your baby or to stalk you."

Lyter and the Richtmyres said that the privacy and confidentiality in international adoption appealed to them.

"If we could have taken a child from America, we would have," Kymberlea said. "You can't put your time and love and invest your heart and then have someone take away your child."

Lyter said the international adoption process feels more finalized than a domestic one.

"In foreign adoption it seemed more comfortable that once we had (the baby) here it would be completed," she said. "There was no possibility of anything overturning that."

Paying to bring the baby home is not cheap; it is not unusual to pay well over $20,000 before getting the baby home.

Adopting Anij cost the Richtmyres $18,000; they were able to pay for that themselves. To date they have paid about $15,000 of the expected $24,000 to bring Sinise home, but with the Nov. 10 deadline to have the funds ready approaching, they are turning to others for help.

Kymberlea and Ed have gone through their home and found items that they no longer need and are planning to sell them Saturday. There are die-cast cars, Harley-Davidson motorcycle parts, a Fender guitar, antiques, framed photographs and other collectible items.

Randa said fundraisers are not common among adoptive parents. Instead many turn to grants or home equity loans to get the extra money they need. Others find that tax breaks help to make up for the expense.

The federal government gives a tax credit of $10,300 to adoptive parents and Wisconsin gives a $5,000 deduction. She said when people express concern about the cost, she often tells them this: "How much did you pay for your last car? And how many will you buy in a lifetime? We don't blink at spending $20,000 on a car."

Lyter said she considers herself and her husband very fortunate that they are able to afford the cost associated with bringing their daughter home.

"I don't know how some people can afford it," Lyter said.

She said they have good jobs, and when they got married, they sold one of their two homes. They are using the equity from that sale to cover the approximately $30,000 they need to pay for the adoption.

"There are some tax incentives, which are good," she said. "Some churches and other non-profit organizations are helpful or supportive of other couples. We didn't pursue that. It's nice that money be left for people that can't afford it and who would be great

parents."

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