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.
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.
