You are sitting at the kitchen table paying bills when the phone rings. It is one of those automated calls saying, “This is a collect call from the county jail, will you accept the charges from S.”
You hear a recorded name from the actual person who is trying to call you. You realize that it is the voice of your daughter’s birth father.

You try to think fast, “Why is he calling me from jail?” “Should I accept the charges?” I’ve heard that collect calls generating from the jail can be expensive. There is only one reason a person chooses to make their one phone call from jail to you. You try to think through the probable scenarios.

The seconds are ticking by so you finally blurt out, “Yes.” It is your daughter’s birth father, he’s in jail, and he wants you to bail him out of jail on a Saturday afternoon. The banks are all closed and the jail wants cash. He suggests a bail bondsman, but they also want cash.

You don’t keep several hundred dollars in cash, ever. Not to mention that if you use a bondsman and he doesn’t show up for the court hearing, you have to come up with thousands of dollars. You try to calculate the odds of whether or not he’ll show up at the court hearing. You take into account his young age, the fact that he has ADHD, and that he frequently oversleeps.

You need time to think about it, so you tell him that you need to talk it over with your spouse. You ask him if there is anyone else, you can call for him if your spouse doesn’t want to loan him the money. He assures you that he has no one else to call. He can’t think of another person who would have that kind of money to loan him.

You are his only hope. What should you do? Would you be enabling him if you bailed him out? Would he start asking for money frequently if you did this?

I suppose this could be considered a down side to open adoption or foster care, couldn’t it? However, when adopting an older child through the foster care system, it is highly likely the parents will know who you are if you were also the foster parent.

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