Visitation?

Once the parental rights are terminated of the bioparent, in this case the father, he has no legal rights to the child whatsoever. He and all of his family become a legal "stranger" to the child. He will have as much right to the child after TPR as the neighbor down the street does.

from what i understand from my adoption my bf has/had NO rights to me thus forgoing his right to visitation. Personally at that point (depending on your daughters age) it should be her decision if she wants to see him again-it was 5 yrs after adoption that I even considered seeing my BF I was 18 by then. But legally he has no right to request any time with the child- just as she relinquishes all rights to inheritence, etc... unless she's named in his/his family's estate. Kudos' to your DH for making her his!!! YEAH!!!!!

The other posters are correct. We are about to finalize our step-parent adoption and went over all of this with our lawyer. One thing I was told is that it is very easy for the bio parent to contest the adoption. If he is a "pain" this may be your biggest worry. I'm not sure of your situation is. I think the only way he could have "visitation" like you are refering to after the adoption is if it was stipulated in the adoption papers before the adoption was final and was something all parties were agreeing to. Even then, from what I understand, that is really just an informal agreement of visitation that can not be held up in courtor enforced because technically your daughter will no longer be his legal child.

After the adoption is finalized, he will not be able to seek visitation. He WILL have a certain amount of time to appeal the adoption. OR if he can prove that you did not make sufficient effort to contact him for his consent, he can reopen the case. If he has already consented to the adoption or relinquished his rights, seeking visitation would be a waste of time.

My wife and I are in the process of adopting 3 of our foster/grandchildren. I had similar concerns because I wanted to make sure that when the parent's rights were terminated and the adoption took place that the bio parents (3 of them) would have no further legal right to anything. The adoption worker had talked with us about entering mediation and working out a visitation agreement since we do intend to have the birth families involved to the extent that we feel their presence is good for the children. However, I had a long conversation with the children's CINA attorney and she said that if mediation agreement is signed it is legally binding, something I do not want. In other words, if we sign a mediation agreement and agree to visitation in this 'contract' and if down the road we decide that the parent is not interacting with the children in a healthy way and terminate his/her visits, that parent would then be able to go to court and argue that we were violating a legal contract. However, since the TPR order was signed, once the 30 day period that the parents have to challenge that order has passed, they no longer have a legal leg to stand on and we are under no obligation to enter into mediation, and they are no longer in a position to demand it. The adoption can proceed without mediation and once complete we will have full legal rights with no "strings" attached. Whether or not the bio parents have any interaction with the kids is totally up to us.