One of the readers of the Russia Adoption Blog recently took me to task for saying that a good agency collects the bulk of its fees for an adoption near the end of the process. Why shouldn't an adoption agency be treated like any other professional services firm, this poster wondered? Why shouldn't it be paid ongoing fees?

In many ways, an adoption agency should be treated like any other professional services firm. You should thoroughly check their references and get a written fee agreement before you commit to work with them, just as you would with an accountant or a lawyer. Interestingly, Russian authorities have required that adoption agencies submit information about their fees as part of the new accreditation process. (Opponents in Russia to inter-country have contended that, since adoption is free in Russia, the fees charged by foreign adoption agencies are signs of malfeasance.)

Now if I were hiring a lawyer at an hourly rate, I could expect to see the number of hours billed rising as his or her work on my case rises.

And that's not so different from what happens in a Russian adoption, if you stop to think about it. Once you choose your agency, you kick things off by paying a modest registration fee. But all the early work that follows is on your shoulders: Gathering all the paperwork required for your homestudy, getting it notarized, answering questionnaires about the kind of child you are looking to adopt, meeting with the social worker, traipsing off to local, state and federal authorities for those many rounds of fingerprints. You are doing this work, and you shouldn't be sending big bucks to an agency during this time.

The agency's heavy lifting kicks in when you send them the results of all this paper chasing. It has to do things like verify the signatures and notary commissions of all the people who notarized your documents. It has to translate those reams of documents, deliver them to Russia and identify an appropriate referral. It has to translate information about the referral, if you are not traveling blind. You should be expected to compensate it now, but in stages. Many agencies time payments to milestones like your acceptance of the referral and your travel to Russia. Those things occur later in your adoption journey, hence my assertion that the bulk of the compensation should be then.

If you can't get a written fee agreement from the agency you are considering, ask why, and re-examine your choice. If there is something in the fee agreement that is unclear, ask for an explanation. It could save a lot of heartache down the road.