Why should you hire an adoption lawyer? Because things are not always as they seem, even in the adoption industry.
Parents looking for children to adopt can be matched online with a mother who wants to place her child for adoption. There are also online resources for paperwork. So if everyone in the process is in agreement, who needs a lawyer? Besides, lawyers are expensive. So why even hire an adoption lawyer?
Because a fake pregnancy is not funny. And it really happens. The Washington Post just reported on a Michigan teen who pretended to be pregnant with triplets.
Just how does one convincingly pretend to be pregnant? Fake A Baby has been around for a while. Its products are very authentic, and it provides everything you might need to fake a pregnancy from a pregnancy test, to ultrasound image and silicone pregnancy belly, to a DNA test result.
The website boasts that they are the “Best Gag Gifts on Earth.” Colleagues have reported that these products are very authentic and look real even to trained eyes. The reports can even be customized to appear to come from your local hospital. The products have a disclaimer that they are for “For Entertainment Purposes Only.” But no one is laughing.
The teen in the report above received dozens of gifts from kind members of the community. Now, each of those neighbors will be a little less willing to help others in need and they may not be so willing to help her when she really needs it. It appeared that the putative teen father was duped as well. Fortunately, the teenage parents were too young to get married.
There is nothing funny about fraud. Gullible adoptive couples have lost thousands of dollars to unscrupulous women who offered to place their fake baby for adoption.
Other women have offered to place a child with more than one family at the same time and accepted money from each of the families who had no knowledge of each other. There is nothing wrong with providing financial assistance to a woman who genuinely intends to place her child for adoption. But, she cannot intend to place one child with more than one couple at the same time.
So, why hire an adoption lawyer? Because things are not always as they seem. We have all been lied to at one time of another and believed a whopper of a story when maybe we should have been a little more skeptical. Lawyers are trained to be cautious and get paid to ask the hard questions so adoptive parents don’t have to. Like any other group of professionals, lawyers share information, particularly about a bad experience. Experience. That is why adoptive parents should hire a lawyer.