Can help anyone help with a question for my friend who is going through the adoption process?

[Rorytigger]

My friend and her DH are on the home straight in the interview process and had their second to last one at the begining of the week. The social worker has told them that the fact that they do not have any savings will go against them - and advised them to think about re-mortgaging to free up some capital??!! Their mortgage will be paid off in under three years time and they have absolutely no loans, credit cards or anything. Surely this means they are in a better position than most people (myself included!). Is this right?? They are now worrying about it. Any advice I could pass on would be great.

never heard such nonsense! not that i'm a financial advisor, but why would you take on debt to give you cash?

a mortgage free home is their savings!

i think you're right, its ludicrous, tell her not to worry, if they need money they can re-mortgage, thanks to their nearly mortgage free home. but not as a just in case, thats stupid!

what a load of tosh, we have had 2 and are not solvent, huge mortgage, no savings, cc debt, one less wage as i am now a sahm, something they insisted on.they can check your finances but we just gave them a very toned down version,police and medical checks were the only ones they needed to see on paper. its annoying when they are so close that they come up with such a small thing,my dh had a huge criminal record from 14 to 17 but we still got thrugh.good luck to them evryone i know who has got to this stage has got thru.

have they told the adoption agency that one of them will stop work when they adopt? if so, the agency may be wondering if this is realistic if they have no savings

is the sw saying that this is a barrier to being approved?

Sounds ridiculous to me.

I recently sat in on an adoption panel meeting and from what I can recall, though I didn't see all of the paperwork, the panel discussed income but didn't refer to savings at all.

I have heard of this before and IIRC it was exactly to do with what Kristina says concernt that if the child needs you to take more time off work you will not have the resources to do it. No-one seems to care about how big your mortgage is .

Sometimes the socail worker is being overcautious. Your frineds would probably be fine to say if the subject came up at panel that should the need arise they would remortgage the house to provide the cash to take more time off.

Yes agree with KC think this would be an acceptable response . Guess it's to do with the unpredictabilty of adoption - not knowing what the childs needs will be until they are placed and the view that adopted children are likely to need a lot of time and attention which can have financial implications