FTC Issues Warning Letters to Unlicensed Private Adoption Intermediaries on Deceptive Practices
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) sent warning letters to 31 unlicensed private adoption intermediaries in September cautioning them against misleading practices that may be violations of the FTC Act or the Consumer Review Fairness Act. The FTC is not publicly releasing the names of the letter recipients.
Misleading practices cited in the letters included deceptive or misleading advertising, misleading claims about high placement rates and short placement times, deceptive promises of financial or other assistance to birth parents, and efforts to prevent consumers from giving honest reviews about the services they received. The agency also issued a consumer alert warning prospective adoptive parents to consult a lawyer and check their state’s adoption resources to become better informed.
In its September announcement, the FTC defines adoption intermediaries as “individuals or entities” that “are not licensed adoption agencies” that “act as middlemen between prospective adoptive parents and birth parents in private adoptions in exchange for a fee, often in the tens of thousands of dollars.”
Concern about unscrupulous practices by unlicensed for-profit private adoption intermediaries has grown in recent years. Last November, Rep. Ann Kuster (D-NH) introduced bipartisan legislation (H.R. 6220) to regulate such intermediaries, including prohibiting advertising, certain intermediary services between birth and adoptive parents, and payments to or on behalf of the birth parents. The legislation exempts public child-placing agencies, private licensed child-placing agencies, and licensed attorneys.
Lead advocates for the legislation include Ethical Family Building, a VFA member, and the National Council for Adoption. VFA is also supporting this legislation, but we are working to add additional language that would clarify that nonprofit 501(c)(3) organizations contracted by a public child-placing agency would also be exempt.
