The Cost of Adoption in Australia

In this video, Accredited Family Law Specialist and Multi-Award Winning Surrogacy Lawyer, Stephen Page reveals the cost of adoption in Australia.

Transcript

G’day, I’m Stephen Page from Page Provan Family and Fertility Lawyers, and I’m talking about the costs of adoption in Australia. This really varies, the type of adoption that you might do really determines the type of cost.

If you are doing the standard adoption, which is there is a stranger child to you, so the child is not a relative, it is not a step-parent adoption, then the cost is pretty small because most of the cost of the adoption is, in fact, taken up by the state.

You may have to pay for the cost of an assessment by a social worker or a psychologist, a mental health professional, to say that it’s in the best interest of the child and that you are suitable to adopt.

There is a fairly nominal cost to the state of applying for adoption, but that’s about it. It’s not like IVF, where you might spend, for example, $10,000 an IVF cycle. It’s certainly a lot less than that. In some parts of Australia, such as New South Wales and Victoria, there are relative adoptions.

Now, those applications will be made, respectively to the Supreme Court of New South Wales or the Supreme Court of Victoria, but more likely the County Court of Victoria, and those applications will basically start from beginning to end, largely paid for by the proposed adopting parents.

So you have to pay for lawyers, and you don’t have legal aid for that. So you might be able to do it yourselves, but most people will pay for lawyers. A ballpark figure, I would suggest, is about $30,000 to do one of those because it’s not straightforward, you just got to meet all the criteria.

Similarly, is step parent adoption and a step parent adoption may involve a couple of steps as opposed to, and that wasn’t an intended pun, as opposed to one step. Depending on what’s involved with the step parent adoption, you may need to first go to the Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia and apply for leave to adopt.

That’s under the Federal Family Law Act. Or if you don’t have to do that, just simply go and bring your application for adoption in the state court. So many people seeking a step parent adoption have to do both steps, namely go to the Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia first to get permission to adopt, and second, to proceed with the adoption in the state court.

The cost, therefore, goes up, and you might be looking in the range of $30- $40,000 for that, mainly for the legal costs. So it’s certainly not the cheapest of processes, but it’s a lot, lot, lot cheaper than surrogacy. Thank you.