David Howick met two boys from Ukraine last fall and felt the same kind of love he feels for his own children.

He worked with local adoption agencies to adopt Koli and Denyse as soon as possible.

But the lengthy, bureaucratic and expensive process got even more costly the day before Thanksgiving last week.

"It was either pay the expedite fee or abandon the adoption," Howick said. "So I paid the 2,080 dollars.

That expense came at the lieutenant governor's office last Wednesday, when Howick went to get an apostille, which authenticates and notarizes official documents both here and overseas.

It's a key part of the international adoption process.

Howick started the apostille process the day before Thanksgiving because adoption deadlines required dozens of pages to be postmarked by Friday. Since the office was closed for the holiday, Howick had to pay the expedited fee, an extra $1,300 on top of the already expensive $780 filing fee.

Others have complained about the cost of the fee in the past.

"The worst thing I heard out of their office was that we have other people in this same situation that we've had to charge the fee, too," said Howick, who is frustrated and outraged.

There are a lot of people applying for apostilles every month.

"At least 2,000 every month," said Paul Neuenschwander of the lieutenant governor's office.

"Mr. Howick knew that waiting to file all his documents at one time would lead to this kind of fee," Neuenschwander said. He could have saved the bulk of the expense by filing them earlier, or as he obtained them. Howick said that wasn't possible, claiming there are so many documents coming in at different times that he would have been at the Capitol every day, doing them one at a time.

Neuenschwander said that Howick was asking for a labor-intensive process to start the day before the holiday and that staff had to work under a time deadline in order to meet Howick's deadline.

"If you want to go to the head of the line, is it fair for everybody else that's in line, that's also paying their fees? So, You tell me," Neuenschwander said. "That's the way business is done."

Other adoption agencies sympathize with Howick. Lutheran Social Services is one agency that helps dozens of families navigate the system. There's no way to get away from fees that can top $60,000 per child in some cases.

Lutheran Social Services' Leslie Whited says government fees often feel like a slap in the face, just as it apparently does for the Howick family.

Especially when those hopeful, prospective parents want to adopt in a timely manner are often trapped by multiple deadlines.

"Pushing these papers forward at the end of an adoption ought not cost $2,000," Whited said. "That's a high fee at the end of an adoption that's already been expensive.

The lieutenant governor's office fees are set by the Legislature and are comparable, even less, than similar fees in other states, according to Neuenschwander.

The fee covers processing, training for notarizing and cross checking dozens of signatures that are contained in adoption applications.

But Howick says no amount of administrative fee should cost that much, and he's annoyed at what happened last week.

"Change the law, because it's simply not fair," Howick said.