Questions, where to start??...Santa Clara County

Ok I would advise you to go through and read my theads. My whole journey is there. It is similiar to yours. To begin though, you have to get married and be married for at least 1 year. In my county they say that it is ok to file the paperwork after 10 months. But that is in san bernardino county. Regardless you have to get married unless you are domestic partners. OTher than that you did right for telling him he could not see the child out side of the court orders. Stick to that. See he could have either complied or taken you back to court to see the child. Which would have resulted in the same. You need one year of no contact or support for you to determine abandone ment and terminate his rights. Contact will not be he called and ask to see him but did not follow through. Ultimately you have to wait at least 10 months if you go get married right now. Though nowing he has abandoned his other children is useful information the main focus needs to be on your son and that abandonement. I hope this helps and right now all you can do is prepare. KEep documentation and keep us informed, and do not hesitate to ask questions.

Thank you very much. I am going to read through your posts as soon as I'm done replying. My fiance and I are registered Domestic partners, since November of 2004, will that take care of the year of being married?? Also, I have another question about this..."Contact will not be he called and ask to see him but did not follow through." This does not mean he had contact with our son, right? I just want all my t's crossed and i's dotted. I do have a running log of dates and times saved on my computer which I update every now and then but I'm worried that the judge, or whoever would think that I made this all up. Do you think printing the properties screen which shows when the file was created will be helpful??

If you are registered domestic partners, yes the year does not apply because you can not get married under california law. When I went to my orientation there was another couple in that same situation but I did not follow it. SO I know it is doable. Now as far as the contact thing. No that is not fconsidered contact. He chose not to see the child because it was not his circumstances. He could have seen him. As far as all the timetable and dates go it is good amunition to prove your points on the abandonement. It is not you who has to prove that the dates and times are accurate, you are not under fire, he is. I wrote a 4 page timeling of events on how it went for the four years with my child. I dod not even think the judge saw it. Because the social worker made the decision and then advised the judge. SO you will need the informaition for the case as far as the social workers report goes. I am getting way ahead of you though. Just remember you are not the one getting grilled, They believe the info you give to be true unless stated otherwise. THe bio dad may go ahead and try to dispute it but facts are facts. He would have to have documentation to prove otherwise, For example, you said he can seee the child and you weere to meet somewhere, YOu decided not to show up. HE would go and file a police report and present that during the hearing if there is one. THen that would prove that you did keep him from his child. THe best thing you can do is go down to your local court house and tell them you want to start a stepparent adoption and ask them how to do it. They usually have a packet or you can get the forms on line and fill them out and file them. As you go through the steps go ahead and write , I will try to walk you through it the best I could. Differant counties are a little differant though. I hope it helps, but start a file of everything you have for the adoption, for example make copies of your timeline, make copies of your court orders and any thing that may be relevant. Copies of his criminal history also. Hope this helps.

Thanks again. My fiance and I are planning on getting married but if we can take care of the adoption just by having our Domestic Partnership on file, we'll file the papers and still get married. He is a really great guy and my son only knows him as daddy. If a social worker were to ask my son any questions as to who his dad is he'd say my fiance. I am going to try and get down to the court house today after work. I just want to get started. How can I find out if he is in jail for a felony?? Santa Clara county criminal info (as far as I know) is not online.

I must have misunderstood. the domestic partnership I was talking about is same sex. But you could still look into it. Laws have changed since the whole domestic partnership thing. YOu can go to the local courthouse that he was arrested in and get that info. Just make sure you look at the criminal one. You do have to pay a lot of the times though

Oh, I will ask if we can be Domestic partners or if we have to be married. Also, I work with police officers and luckily they have been nice enough to help me get some case numbers and things like that. They gave me my case numbers from when I filed Domestic Violence charges on him and they gave me a case number I had been looking for...It was in regards to a child abuse case my ex was involved in with one of his many childs mothers and child (make sense?) LOL...This case shows that he was ordered to participate in random drug testing and parenting classes and that he never complied. Hopefully if I try and do this all on my own it will all work out. Do you think my custody/visitation orders from our divorce should also be presented?

It is still legally married for one year. Domestic partners do not count if your not of the same sex. The only reason same sex parters get a break from it is because they cannot legally marry in this state. Since the biological father is in jail I suggest you wait it out. Don't do anything until he has gotten out of jail and been out for one year. And if he does not contact your or the child for a year and does not pay support then you have enough grounds to terminate his rights. You have plenty of time to get married and be married for one year and then file for adoption. If you don't wait it out and you start pursuing this now I doubt it will go through and I don't believe your chances will be very good. I tried to pursue it and ended up in custody court instead of adoption because the courts wanted to give him more of a chance to be a dad. And all of this took another year even though he didn't follow through with alot of it they kept giving him more chances. The only reason my husband got to finally adopt her is he died. Otherwise I would still be going to family court over custody and visitation and she would still be seeing a reunification therapist. I really think you should just document everything don't say anything to him until that year of no contact while hes out of jail is up. The jail time will not count as time of no contact.

I disagree. Your county is a little differant. Yes she does have a year to get married and start the case rolling. You can terminate the rights if you can prove that when he was out of jail he did not pursue a relationship with the child and the he has a history of not complying with court orders, Yes I do agree that you should not even mention the adoption thing, however start plannning now. If he had to complete a parenting class to see his child and a year went by and he did not even attemp it then yes he abandone the child. Even though he is in jail he can still send birthday cards and christmas card and call to check on her.I gotta go and it will take a while for me to start using the internet on a daily basis I have my computer down. But it will take you time to start your case anyway. Yes keep custody and visitation orders for the case though.

He has only been in jail since May 1st of this year but the last contact he had with our son was in December 2004, he has had plenty of time to see our son before he got locked up. I actually talked to a lawyer and was told that he worked a case where the couple had only been married 3 months and the adoption went through. I mean, I can totally prove that he has not seen or contacted myself or our son in over a year. The lawyer also said that even if we got married and filed the papers a month later, the worst the court could do was hold our papers until we were married for a year. They wouldn't throw them out or anything...so I think we will get married and file. Even if he is in jail, they can still serve him the papers.

I'm sorry I wasn't reading your dates correctly, I assumed he had went to jail in May 2005 not in 2006 (you know what they say about assuming) and I must have been having a brain cramp when I told you you had a bad case. You are correct, you can file on the grounds that before he went to jail it had been a year of no contact. There was no support either right? that makes it even better (judges hate it when a father wont support his child but as soon as another man wants to step up they act like they care). As long as you did not move or make it so he could not see the child you have a good case. And you are right, you can file now ..I filed a year before we were actually able to see a judge about it and the probation dept. just held onto the paperwork waiting to see what was going to happen. But once you file and social services or probation (however your county does it) get ahold of the paperwork they are going to immediately want to send him the forms about the adoption. He can also go after visitation while in jail. The court could force you into taking your child to the jail to visit him and you to supervise as part of a reunification. I'm just telling you what could happen..not that it will. It depends on how smart your ex is and what kind of attorney he is appointed. I waited till my ex got out of prison before trying to get him to terminate his own rights because I did not want to put my child through being ordered to go to a prison. Now don't foreget, he will be appointed an attorney (if he wants to fight it) by the courts and you have to prove his rights need to be terminated, make sure you get signed affidavits from family on friends on how long its been since they have seen a relationship of visitation of any kind. Depending on the courts and your financial situation they could make your husband pay for his attorney and court fees. but I don't really know how often that happens. She is right though, my county was definately weird. None of the advice I got from anyone worked in my county. I actually had to do my adoption in the same court as our custody and visitation case was in. and I had to wait for the judge to ok us to proceed with the adoption after giving him all of his chances. She already said the chance of getting an adoption were pretty low, the judge was pro-fathers. I've seen people on here go through both the adoption and custody court at the same time and still be able to finish out the adoption and it went through. Also I want you to know, the contact with you counts as contact. since the child is obviously too small to talk to on the phone the judge will see that as contact. This is what a lawyer and the probation department told me, so make sure you stick with the correct date for no contact, its better to tell them everything in the beginning so nothing bites you later. That would be the very last time you ever heard his voice or received a letter in the mail or postcard or gift or anything for that matter. Also, you need to know what jail he is in or his prison number so he can be served. I hope I was more helpful this time, so sorry about the wrong info earlier.

It's ok. Thanks again for the forms. Did you have a lawyer?

No problem, I'm glad I could be of some help to you. No we did not have a lawyer. We went to see one and was totally prepared to hire him but he said we didn't have much of a chance because the father was in prison due to blue collar crimes and it was his word against ours whether there was contact or not. and the child support is not willful failure to pay since he cannot pay due to incarseration. I did not have an attorney in family court either. I just don't believe lawyers are worth the hassle in family court.