Help, Bio dad in contesting and threatening.

All you can do is continue on and see what the judge says. All you need to prove in court is that he did abandon her and your family provides stability and security for the child. He needs to prove that adoption is not in her best interest. This will be hard to prove since he hasn't been around and the social worker supports the adoption. The social workers report carries a lot of weight. Rarely do they recommend against the social workers report unless there is a legal issue at stake. He can contest it at the court hearing and you may have to go back and forth to court a couple of times, but most likely you will prevail. Many times the absent parent will say how much they have changed or are willing to change but the judge will consider it too little too late. They look at the most stable and beneficial environment for the child. Past drug history, early in the recovery process, new job = new stressors. He's got a long way to go yet. In addition to that, even once the child is adopted he is still not relieved of back support. He is responsible for that till the adoption is finalized. I say ride it out. Your chances are good you will win. He may appeal, but they will only look at if he can prove he didn't abandon or that termination would be detrimental to the child. They will not take in any new evidence into account. All you can do at this point is ride out the storm. If you wait and he gets a chance to re-establish himself in some capacity in the childs life THEN you will have a lot more difficulty in finalizing an adoption. Remember too that LOTS of absent parents that have been gone for years come in to court with the same story he has. Trust in the fact that these judges and social workers see this EVERYDAY. They get the other parents number real quick. Don't panic, take a deep breath, and move forward.

Thank you so much for your encouragement. I have seen so many stories about contested abandonements where the donor prevails. And heard very few about the child prevailing. It is so hard to decide what to do. But we know we don't want him to have a foot hold in her life. Do you have a story you would be willing to share?

I actually have three. When my husband and I got married he had a son and I had 2 daughters. All of our children were small, my youngest a baby. One of the things I think that drew us together was the fact that we had both been dealing with deadbeat parents. 1 bio dead beat mom and two different bum dad's. My eldest daughter had only seen her donor a couple of times on and off in her short life and my baby had never met her dad. He was gone before I even found out I was pregnant. My husbands ex left when my son was only 15mos. old. She left him with the baby and that was that. After we had been married awhile we decided to make our family a whole one. So we actually went through 3 stepparent adoptions. 3 entirely different scenarios and we succeeded with them all. My eldests father consented and signed the forms. The other 2 were a fight. We have even gone through one appeal and if you would like to see that I can send it to you. Bio mom was the toughest fight when you factor in the time, money and aggravation. We first went to family court for my husband to get sole legal and physical custody. He had sole physical custody and 50% legal at the time. We went back to family court for the rest. Family court is tougher than juvenille court. They want to preserve continuing contact. To add an additional twist, my husband himself is adopted. We are currently searching for his bio parents for medical reasons that recently surfaced. He is estranged from his adoptive mother. His adoptive parents divorced when he was 4 and she moved him to the other end of the country. She was also an abusive parent. She actually sided with Bio mom and sued for grandparent visitation. So believe me when I tell you I have been through it all. Bio mom actually got some visitation and was even able to have him overnights out of the county for awhile. Grandma got some visitation as well. Then I got fed up. With the attorney's and the nonsense in general and so I did something about it. I started reading obsessively about adoption and family court issues. I stared invesigating things on my own. It paid off. I learned that public records can be your best friend. I pulled the divorce papers from Grandma's divorce. I found evidence of unfitness from clear back then. Unfortunately that many years ago the bias was towards the mom. I believe the courts are much fairer on that end now. I dug up her dirty laundry and shook it out and she backed off. Bio mom, I found out she was using drugs. She was also mentally unstable and when that was brought out she took it out on me to the point I had a 3 year restraing order put on her and she was arrested and convicted of a misdemeanor for threatening me. I also found out her boyfriend was a 3 time convicted felon and a drug user as well. We went through the psyciatric evaluations and put the poor kid in threapy. My son was appointed an attorney the whole bit. However, I did not give up. I used what I had learned about the law to my advantage as well. When someone would tell me something that went against us I would say " But doesn't family code say...........? Is what your saying okay to do?" It wasn't accusational type questioning I would use. I just made it sound like all I wanted to do was what the law said and I was asking them to make sure I had the interpretation right. Very innocent sounding questioning. But I would have the occasional moment when an attorney would ask " What code was that or what case was that? Hmmm let me look it up and I'll call you back." I got a lot more respect and a lot less jerking around when they relialized I was educating myself on the matter not just following along. Court orders were changed based on my input and evidence. Eventually she gave up and was gone with no contact for a full year and we filed for adoption under Family Code 8604. We won. She never appealed. My youngest was the last one that was adopted. Her donor had gotten himself in prison and is still there. However, the sticky part was that he regularly wrote letters. Horrible awful letters full of graphic prison life and foul language. I never (obviously) gave them to my daughter. I did keep them though. They turned out to be an asset. As the social worker copied them off for the report I would dig through my huge box of letters and find one more horrible than the last. I think she had a half a dozen before she said, "I think the judge will get the picture." My ex was appointed an attorney( as was bio mom, be prepared for that, if they don't have an attorney the court will give them one.) His own attorney tried to talk him out of fighting but my ex insisted. The court experiance on that one was interesting to say the least. He was led out in shackles and that lovely prison issue jumpsuit. That makes a statement. I said next to nothing in that hearing. I let him ramble. Basically give him enough rope. Well that worked. When the judge asked me if I had anything I would like to add I just said no, I think he's covered it all. The judge took all of about 5 seconds to render her decision against him. Literally 5 sec. He did appeal. That just made the waiting to finalize take longer. He got shot down on appeal too. The appeal is interesting reading. That is why I offer to show it to anyone who wants to see it. The judges give thier reasoning in an appeal. They tell you what they felt was good evidence, why it was good evidence, why the judges decision was a good one. You get to see, so to speak, in the judges head. Anyway, this was long and drawn out, and I gave you the condensed version, but I can say I feel your pain. Been there done that. It's been worth it. 3 adoptions finalized and it is so nice to be an intact family. It also made I and my husband's relationship stronger. Now we feel like since we have been to hell and back everything else is small potatoes. We don't sweat the small stuff. So hang in there, the light is at the end of the tunnel, it just seems really dim at the moment.

Yes please send me anything you can. We just went and filed for a court date today, and we are four weeks out. Our social worker seems to be pretty hopeful. But as this is our daughter's life at stake I am just beside myself. I hope that he doesn't take it too far. He is so good at presenting himself as honorable.