Need help with bfamily!!

[coloradomom]

Hi all, if anyone is reading this board tonight I would love some advice. I am an adoptive mom, I hope I do not offend anyone, I am merely looking for advice and other perspectives.
Here is my situation:
We have a beautiful baby girl whom we will legally adopt end of Feb. 2004.
Her bfamily gave her up for adoption mainly because of financial reasons. They are great people but I feel a little uncomfortable because they called us today. Their car transmission has broken down and they need quite of bit of $$$ soon. This makes me upset bc I do not want to set a precedence and that they will come to expect this of us. My husband, who is a softy, says he does not want Abby, daughter, to ever be upset with us one day because we chose not to help when we had the means to do so. I have tried to contact our social workers but no one is available. My husband told them he would call back later tonight, so I need some advice from any of you that have any experience or advice in this area. I am very upset right now and I want to do the right thing but I am unsure of what that is!! Do any of you have any advice for me, I am very upset by this.

Thanks for reading,
Mary
Abby 8/13/03

[jd11365]

Mary,
I'm not an adoptive mom, so I can't give you personal advice about this subject, but I can feel how upset you are right through your post. The advice I can give you would be to post this in the lounge where there is MUCH more traffic. If not adoptive parents, there are a lot of attorneys who might be able to offer a legal perspective which might influence your decision. There are also some very bright and level-minded people as well who might offer suggestions as well. I hope you find the help you are looking for and congratulations on your baby girl!

Jamie
Mommy to Kayla
5-1-03

[smkinc]

Hope you get this in time. Our agency cautioned that it is very appropriate to set boundaries with the birthfamily to make the relationship successful. I would definitely NOT cross the boundary of lending money. Your obligation to the birthfamily is to raise your daughter to be a kind, loving and generous person--who respects her birthfamily. You do not need to financially bail them out. You also do not want to set a precedence to her that she needs to take care of her bfamily finacially as she gets older.

HTH,

Mary (Mom to Jeremiah 2/4/03)

[Melanie]

Wow. I have no experience or advice with this. I would just suggest that you and your husband come to an agreement so that it doesn't cause a problem with the two of you.

[LMac]

Dear Mary,

My heart just breaks for you. This is SUCH a tough situation to be in. :(

I am an adoptive mom as well. We have a semi-open agreement with our birthmom, so she can not contact us directly as all contact goes through the agency and she doesn't know our last names, where we live, etc. Therefore, we will not run into this kind of situation. But I know that I would be up into all hours of the night with worry and indecision if she did contact us for $$.

I'm so sorry you are having to go through this.

Without knowing what "agreement" you set up with them prior to the adoption in regards to contact, I would definitely advise only going through your agency. You certainly don't want to start a precedent with them. And your ONLY responsibility and gift to them is raising your daughter in a loving home. This has been a VERY VERY tough thing for me to come to terms with. I feel "guilty" and want to shower our BM with presents in thanks.

I hope you have been able to contact your SW and get their advice. They are the experts and I'm sure have seen this MANY MANY times. I would be interested to hear what they have to say about this. Are there stipulations/laws pertaining to how long after the adoption you "have" to help the BPs? I know of one family on another Adoption board I frequent that have been giving their BF $$ for a year (their son is 14 months old) b/c they just couldn't say no the first couple of times. Now they have had to change their number and send a letter to them asking them to only contact them through the agency b/c it has gotten so out of hand.

I'm sorry this is so long, and I haven't helped much, but please know how much I feel for you. Let us know what happened. Please feel free to PM me if you want to talk further.

Hugs,