Adoption

Pursuant to a legislative requirement, GAO provided information on 77 employers offering financial assistance to employees adopting children.

GAO found that: (1) 56 of 77 employers financially assisted employees adopting children and commonly imposed a dollar limit on the amount of reimbursement; (2) seven of those employers provided lump-sum payments to adoptive parents without regard to expenses actually incurred; (3) employers commonly set adoption reimbursement limits at $1,000 and $2,000, but payments ranged from $200 to $4,000; (4) employers generally did not limit the number of times an employee could receive adoption payments, although 21 of 56 employers required that adopted children be under a certain age for the employee to qualify for reimbursement; (5) 26 companies excluded employees from receiving payment for adopting stepchildren and many employers also restricted reimbursement to full-time or salaried employees; (6) although many employers were large companies, they assisted relatively few adopting employees; and (7) all 77 employers allowed adopting parents to use some form of unpaid or paid leave, but few employers provided adoption or parental leave benefits.