One of the biggest factors that inhibits couples and families from adopting children, is the high cost involved in the adoption process. While adopting children from the foster care system can be completely free( after reimbursement from the state at the end of the year,) to relatively inexpensive, few looking to adopt turn towards the children waiting in foster care, for a variety of different reasons.

With some adoptions costing upwards of $20, 000, many families who would love to bring a child into their hearts, lives, and homes, find themselves at a loss when it comes to how to finance an adoption. Seeing this issue, one company has stepped up and created a new home equity loan just for adoptive parents.

Chase, a division of J.P. Morgan Chase, introduced the New Additions loan program last month, being the first to offer such a service. They are hopeful that this will give the hundreds of thousands of families who adopt children every year a little more flexibility with their finances.

Like all loan programs, there are some stipulations that go along with New Additions. Applicants must have more than ten percent equity in their homes already in order to qualify, as well as having a credit score which is above the subprime rate level...that would be in the low to mid six hundreds to those who don't follow credit ratings. How much you can borrow, depends on how good you have been in the past about paying people back, so good credit history is what they are really looking for.

The icing on the cake for the New Additions home equity loan, is that whatever interest rate the applicant qualifies for will be discounted by a full percentage point for the first six months of the loan. So if you were to qualify for a 7.5 percent interest rate, Chase's New Additions loan would discount the interest rate to 6.5 percent for the first six months, allowing qualifying families even more breathing room with their finances during those first stressful months of adjusting to having a new child in the house.

This is a prime interest loan, however, meaning that the interest rate is going to vary, keeping in line with whatever the prime interest rate happens to be. Keep in mind that this means that your payments are going to fluctuate or down, every time that the prime interest rate changes.