Adopting my stepchild while stationed overseas

Go to your base legal office. Here in Misawa they told me they won't touch any adoption other than an uncontested step-child adoption. We just got our son two weeks ago and now have to pay for a translator to go to court with us. Anyways, check at base legal to see if they can help you. Good Luck

You would have to go to family court -- not probate or juvenile court. Probate court is for settling estates or contesting wills after people have died, and juvenile court is primarily for juvenile offenders. I am speaking as a former legal secretary in Los Angeles with 14 years' experience. I was adopted by my stepfather in 1963 the day he married my mother. He was in the Navy and was stationed in Japan. My mom is Japanese, and I was born there, so perhaps the adoption was made easier because of it. I was five when my stepfather adopted me. It was an uncontested stepparent adoption, and it was no different than if I'd bought a car from you and you gave me the pink slip. My birth father, Ken, abandoned me in 1959 when I was a year old, never to be heard from again. When I tracked him down in 1996, he had numerous excuses for never taking care of me. He never married my mother, but went on to get another woman pregnant. He married her, but ever so reluctantly. He never told my two half-sisters about me until I contacted him and he was forced to. He severed communications six weeks later because he didn't want his community (Davenport, Iowa) to know about me. It turns out he had served on the Davenport City Council in the 1980s, calling himself "Mr. Family Values" and using "Family is Important" as his campaign motto. Now Mr. Hypocrite was faced with telling the truth to his community, and he wasn't willing to do that, saying he had an image to uphold, and I wasn't going to ruin it for him. His mother, brother and extended family weren't any better. Speaking from experience, please tell your child the truth about the circumstances of her adoption and why her birth father is not in her life. I was not told my adoptive father was not my biological father until I was 27. To say that information was devastating was an understatement. My birth father had been adopted by his great-aunt and great-uncle when he was 18 months old, and he was very evasive when I asked about his birth parents. To this day, I know next to nothing about my family's medical history or where my country of origin is on that side of the family. He didn't find out he was adopted until he was 11 and his adoptive father blurted it out during an argument. He has issues with women because he is still angry that his mother placed him for adoption (he was very sickly and she was newly divorced) and kept his brother. Ironically, all his children and grandchildren are female! Also, in 1937, when he was adopted, it was considered a source of embarrassment -- a second-rate way to have children. If your stepdaughter wishes to contact her birth father when she's older, prepare her for the fact that he may not be a gem of a guy. After all, he did abandon her. My birth father seemed like an honest guy who'd matured after nearly 40 years, but I was bitterly disappointed. He was still doing the same thing that he did when he was 22, when I was born -- making promises he had no intention of keeping, and refusing to face the fact that he was immature and irresponsible. Your stepdaughter also needs to get as much information about her father's medical history as possible. If there's cancer, diabetes, or heart disease running in that side of the family, she needs to know. And also try to find out what her father's ethnic background is. We all need to know where our roots are. But most of all, be honest. It is not right to withhold information from her and then tell her when she is an adult, as was done with me. It destroys trust and the solid foundation of her parentage quickly becomes one of sand.