Defacto Parent Status

My attorney explained it to me like this - once it was approved the judge and court would ask my thoughts and input in the same way that they'd talk to a biological parent. I was given that legal status sort of...When the judge approved/granted it she immediately said - well now I have a question and asked me what I thought about visitation with the Bmom and my son. The next court dates they also had me sitting at the table with the attorney's, SW, ect (mom wasn't there but when she was she was next to me.)Basically you can have some sort of say in the case. For me it was the first step towards adopting - the judge said she could tell from my documents when I was asking for the status that I wanted to adopt and she wanted to start that process (she never even asked if that's what I wanted - she could just tell.)

OK so my qustion and I do not mean to thread jack but with the defacto parent status they gave you that even with bio moms rights not being terminated? I ask because I have had this discussion ith my case manager way to many times and she said that you cannot become defacto until TPR has happened. Course she rarely deals with kids who want to be adopted etc. So I am not sure how right she is lol.

I don't know if CA is different, but here you can become a defacto parent to your FC after about 6 months. You do not have to be past TPR. Again, Texas may be different.

TPR was not done when I got Defacto status in CA. The "rules" were that I had to have acted as a parental figure for a considerable amount of time. When I applied for it my son had been my foster son for about 5 or 6 months and the SW's attorney said that wasn't long enough (they were the ONLY ones that contested Bmom's people didn't even contest it). The judge said that because my son was special needs she was sure that the amount of time I was his parent should be counted as much longer....

in CA you don't even have to wait 6 months in some cases. we were granted it before the 6 months was up. the judge said he rarely granted this so early or considered a request to adopt before this time was up (we'd only had them 3 months), but he said seeing that this was their longest placement in over 2 years he'd grant the defacto status and it was WAY WAY WAY before tpr. i think it comes down to the judge and the particular case.to answer the op question....another thing defacto does is puts you on the inside for paperwork. this was by far the BEST part of being defacto....we got EVERY court document that was sent to bio. when there was an appeal, they put together a binder of every court document that had been written or submitted since the case had begun years earlier and mailed it to all parties. had we not been defactos, we would not have gotten this. it gave us SO much insight into our children's lives we would have otherwise never known.