Take this for what you want but here is my wife and I's experience with adoption. My wife has been pregnant 7 times and all have died except 1 between 6 and 24 weeks along in the pregnancy. Anyways, here is what we found....
Domestic adoption of a 24 month or younger healthy child will run you $15,000.00 to $30,000.00.....no ifs, ands, or buts about it. Either going through a private agency, the state, or foster care, get ready to bust out the check book.
If you go the foster care route, get ready for some serious classes, back ground checks, home invasion by the state, disrupting your biological children's lives, dealing with crack head parents, court dates, etc. My wife and I went through the classes about 2 years ago and said screw it. You have NO rights as a foster parent and your life stops being yours once a child is placed in your house.
Over seas adoption. Anyone who tells you this is a cheaper method has not looked at it in depth. You will pay no less then $8,000.00 to buy a baby from China and that is before you have to fly your entire family over for between 4 and 21 days to pick up the child and get the legal BS taken care of.
Look here...
Statistics on Cost of Adopting
Now, when you see that $2500.00 adoption fee what that applies to is an occasion when you are adopting a family members child who has died or been incarcerated for 40 years or something. That is just legal fees. Best bet, contact some local agencies and go have a meeting with them. I pissed off more then one agency when I asked for a bottom line number on what this would cost. The women (always over done, self riotous ****s) would scoff and drop some BS line like...
"What is money when it comes to a child's life?"
...but when the numbers came out, it was ALWAYS north of $25,000.00.