Failed Adoption

The Friday before last my DH and I were all packed in anticipation of flying to AZ that day, which is where the baby was to be born. We had our tickets and, meanwhile, I had purchased tickets for my mom to come to our house where she would stay and take care of our cats and help us when we returned.

The attorney had told me the birthmother was being induced late Thursday night and that he would call me early in the morning to let me know how everything went. So, when the phone rang early Friday morning, I figured he would be telling me the baby had arrived and whether it was a boy or a girl. Instead, he told me that he got a voice mail late Thurs. night from the birthmother saying that she had changed her mind. He said he was very sorry, that he had never had this happen before and that he would return the full amount of our escrow deposit including the living expenses that had been paid out to the birthmother so far and the portion of the fee which he was entitled to keep in the case of a failed adoption. I asked when he was sending it because I needed it to pursue another option. He promised it was already in the mail.

The next couple days were horrible. I had to cancel my mom's flight plus all of our own travel arrangements. We had to notify the many people we had told about this situation that it had fallen through. There was a pile of baby gear in the garage that one of DH's friends had given to us from their child.....stroller, toys, carseat, etc. I had to walk by all of these things to get to my car. After a few days, DH shoved it all in a closet so we didn't have to look at it until he could bring it back to his friend. We had completely cleared out the room that we were making a nursery and had put wood flooring in and I had bought a number of things for the baby for the trip. It had all been so tangible that we could have a baby soon and having the whole thing evaporate just left me with a feeling of overwhelming emptiness. The frightening realization also sunk in that we could fail at adoption multiple times just like we had failed at IVF.

I know this story sounds bad enough right now, but it's about to get worse.

On Monday, I still didn't have the promised check from the attorney. I called him and he claimed that he had just called the person who was handling it for him and I would receive it the following day by UPS. The next day, on Tuesday, it arrived by UPS. This meant he had never actually mailed it on Friday like he had told me, but I didn't think too much of it. I went over to the bank and deposited the check. On Friday morning, I logged into my bank account online to find that the check had been returned for insufficient funds.

DH called him and the attorney gave him a song and dance and a bunch of excuses that didn't make any sense. We asked that he wire us the funds immediately. We told him we needed it for something else and he was potentially ruining that for us. We had given him $ 26,000 in total. After paying birthmother expenses (or supposedly paying them) and taking out his own fee, we should have had $ 18,300 remaining in escrow. He should have been able to send at least that portion immediately because it should have been sitting in an escrow account untouched. At any rate, he gave DH his word that he would wire in on Monday.

The way this attorney found out about us was through a friend of my MIL's. She had been very close friends with his parents (who are now deceased) and has known the attorney since he was a child. At any rate, I told my MIL what happened. She told her friend. Her friend called the attorney and got on his case. Apparently, he confessed to her that he had used our money. His wife told her they can't pay their mortgage (essentially implying that, if we go after them, they have nothing to give us).

Towards the end of this adoption scenario there were a lot of things that just didn't seem right. It'd take too long to go into them all right now but suffice it to say that there were many days that I called my MIL and she and I would discuss inconsistencies in things the attorney was telling me. We talked about how it was odd that he had me speak with the birthmother a couple times at the beginning of this, but nothing since the end of November after we had started sending her living expenses through the attorney. When I asked him about it, he said she was trying to distance herself. There was also an issue where, very late in things, the official due date got moved from Feb. 2 to Feb. 12. Then he told me she was going to be induced on the 19th. And during the last couple weeks, he supposedly could never connect with her directly and they kept leaving each other voice mails. In our initial agreement with him, it said he would retain the AZ attorney two weeks prior to the birth, but he never retained one. When I asked him about it, he said he was "trying to protect our pocketbook" and that we didn't really need the attorney until after the birth. I asked him several times for the name of the attorney he planned to use, and he always skirted around the question and told me not to worry about it.

When my MIL and I discussed these things, we always managed to convince ourselves that we were just being paranoid and maybe the fact that it was intended to be a closed adoption was lending to the issue of feeling like we never had adequate information or explanations for things. We wanted to believe everything was all right. I didn't even get DH involved. I figured there was no sense in worrying him for no reason.

Anyway, so in addition to this attorney having violated our escrow account (which is a crime in and of itself), I strongly suspect there was some level of adoption fraud going on as well. When my MIL's friend confronted him, she also said she believed that he had forged some documents we received that were supposedly from the hospital. He didn't admit it, but he didn't deny it either. The problem is adoption fraud would be very difficult to prove. We will, at the very least, be going after him for the escrow.

My MIL is inconsolable about this whole thing. She's been hanging on by a thread since the death of my FIL. This possible adoption had given her something to be excited about. When it fell through, I think she was as upset as I was. And, when we found out the attorney had been taking advantage of us....it's too much for her to take. She feels like it was her fault since it was her friend who connected him with us. The thing is I had googled this attorney's name before we got involved with him and he seemed well respected. I found a number of adoption related articles where he is quoted. He is a licensed attorney. How could any of us have possibly known? Why did he have to pick us to prey on? He knew all about our history of failed cycles, miscarriages, etc. And he knew that my DH had just lost his Dad this year. I'm not a spiteful person, but I can't help but feel that I want this guy to end up paying for what he has done to us and I definitely want to prevent him from doing it to anyone else.

At this point, I just don't feel like I can jump back into pursuing adoption. I know that this was an unusual situation because we were dealing with a crook, but it's made me see how vulnerable potential adoptive parents are to the professionals who are supposed to be helping them, to the birthmothers, etc.
I just don't feel like I could handle this sort of thing happening again.