Putative Registries - Father's Rights

I hope that these archaic, demeaning registries aren't around when my boys are of fathering ages. Sigh.

DH and I are in somewhat of a sticky situation related to this topic. The emom chose us to adopt her baby but does not want the edad to know anything about the baby. In fact, he currently believes she is not even pregnant. I have tried to drill into her head that we MUST get his consent or the adoption will not go through, but now I fear she is going to run and move to another state (thinking this will ensure she never has to tell him). I have asked that she try to talk to him about his rights & get him to agree to the adoption but she won't. I told her that if she doesn't talk to him, the first he will know of this baby is when the state contacts him to sign TPR. Which I would imagine will only aggravate the situation & possibly he would not sign TPR simply b/c he was not told the truth in the beginning. They are both minors and his parents have said that THEY wanted to raise the baby IF she was actually pregnant. This is when the lies began :( The emom does not want his family anywhere near the child. My DH and I are now trying to decide if it is worth the aggravation and added stress this presents. I firmly believe that he has the same rights as she does (or should anyway) and that adoption is as much HIS decision as it is HERS. We live in a putative registry state and I am sure he has no idea about that. But I know his name & have told our attorney EVERYTHING. So regardless of how she handles it, we are going to proceed in what we feel is the most ethical and moral way...even if it means in the end, we don't get to adopt the baby :(

I think I'm with you that whatever the answer is, the whole putative registry thing isn't it. I don't why it hadn't really occurred to me in relation to my own son until now.

If my son told me that he had gotten a girl pregnant and she was planning to put the child up for adoption... I think as the grandparents of that child we should have the right to keep that child in our own family as a first choice if possible, rather then to go to complete strangers. I mean if there are family members willing to adopt, wouldn't that be a good thing????Even family should have to go through all the hoops like everyone else would, to be approved, but if "approved" shouldn't they have preference over a stranger?keeping families intact, (if at all possible) should be a priority even in an adoption, I would think....as it seems to me it would be in the best interest of the child to grow up with his own "approved" family then to perfect strangers.but if the babys father does not even know....then the grandparents won't know....and children are lost.

I want to say how nice it is to see PAP who only want to adopt a child when everyone is in agreement. I hope things work out for you soon... even if it is with a different child. Best wishes.

We were told two weeks ago that my husband was the father of a fourteen year old girl that he never knew about. (This happened before we knew each other) We received the paternity results yesterday and she is definitely his child. It's a bit of a convoluted story because my brother-in-law has known about this all along and never told us. He knew about it before he knew my husband and once he met him he didn't feel it was his place to tell. His aunt (bro in law) is the grandmother who is raising the child. Apparently the mother was 17 when the child was born and the grandparents raised her. I am told that it was always known that my husband was the father but the grandparents wanted her and did not want my husband to know about her. A few years ago the child starts asking questions about who her father is and they tell her - but tell her that she can't say anything to him because he didn't know. She has been around us every year at my niece's birthday parties and we had NO idea! Even worse - for her to know and not be able to say anything, I can't imagine how that made her feel. She is at the age where she is really pushing because she wants to meet her father and they finally realized that if they didn't tell us, she was going to tell us herself and they had no idea how that would turn out. So the grandmother finally told us. We are told there was some discussion a few years ago about telling us but they decided not to because they were afraid we would take her away from them. I know it must have been difficult to come forward with this, but it's very hard right now to feel much compassion for the grandparents. They did to my husband exactly what they were afraid he might do to them. My husband's mother passed away last year never knowing about her grandchild. My husband has been deprived of 14 years of his daughter's life. He has always wanted a girl. It hurts him very much to know that he has missed so much of her life and that she never had a chance to know his mom. I honestly don't know what our rights are now. They say that they adopted her but they would have had to say they didn't know who the father was to make that happen. Of course this is all very fresh and although we've had conversations with the grandmother, we haven't had a chance to sit down with both grandparents and truly find out their expectations just yet. We truly want what's best for the child. We also have a son (her younger brother) who will be impacted by this as well. It's just so hard to fathom what is best until we get a chance to know each other. We are not certain whether they are going to freely let us have contact with her or not. We want to give her every opportunity to get to know us and we want to know and love her. Hopefully we'll have more answers soon. I must say that this is a heart wrenching experience from the biological father's side when he has no idea and is given no choice. He would have raised her had he been given the opportunity. We are thankful to God for this blessing that we have been given and pray that he will give us the strength to be patient and understanding.

Welcome to this forum , this a good place to come for support and for advice,questions and conserns. I am also a birthfathers wife and have gotten a lot of good support on these threads for a few years now, and hope you will keep coming back also as there are many people here who have experience in these areas. I do hope everyone in your B-daughters life can all agree to do what is best for the child, always keeping the childs best interest in mind...and it seems like getting to know you too is what she wants to do. And keeping "all" her loved ones around her seems like what would truely benefit her the most. (Imo)The more people to love her the better.. :grouphug: please pop in to let us know how things are coming along.

Not to go into too many specifics (this is a public forum), but our son's first mom chose not to name his bio father. We live in a putative registry state. I can tell you that he did know of the pregnancy and that there were very good reasons to not name him. I am so torn over the whole situation. As a woman and now as a mother I can totally see why she made her decision and the instinct to protect her child that drove her to do so. I do. However, as an amom I do wonder how we will explain her choice to our son over the years. I know that there will be many questions and inquiries at every stage of development, and I have to say that I am not looking forward to it. She is and hopefully will be a part of all of our lives, and she will be able to directly answer some of the questions, but I know it will be hard for all of us, and most of all for our son. How do you begin to explain to your beloved son that while he has 2 moms, but he only has 1 dad? This is one of those things breaks my heart when I stare into his sweet sleeping face and imagine all the heartache and loss that he will have to go through in this life - the school bully, the death of a loved one, his first broken heart, and never knowing his bdad. sigh. I just wish he could be spared this.

Our ason's bdad's rights were terminated because he did not register with our State's Registery. Bmom did not name him on the OBC either. I do, however, know that the bdad knew of the pregnancy. I am glad, in our situation, that the registery exists. Bdad and bmom met in rehab. Instead of going home to his wife and children he came home with her and got her pregnant 2x. Bdad's wife actually divorced him through public notification. Bdad never supported any of his children. He never got off drugs. In fact, he jumped bail and disappeared when bmom was in the first trimester. She did not hear from him again until after the adoption was proceeding. He knew about the adoption, he said it was for the best. As far as I know, to this day bdad is still running from the law and who knows if he will ever be found. In situations like this,(IMHO) when the bdad knows full well about the child, does not support bmom or his other children, chooses to remain at large and unattainable, state registery's seem very much needed. I just dread having to explain all of this to ds. Honestly, I don't know if I can. It breaks my heart for him. I believe that in State's where the registery exists, the Sex-Ed classes at school should be required to go over the rules and guidelines so everyone will be aware of their rights.

It has been a couple of weeks now since we met my husband's birth daughter. I must say that it is going much better than I expected in some ways. The grandparents are very open and totally willing to let us be as involved as we want and she wants. Of course it takes time for her to get to know us. The grandmother stays in communication with me and that has helped tremendously. The birthdaughter seems to be very reserved towards her father still and I know that will only change with time. She seems much more comfortable with me but I'm sure it's because I'm a woman. We of course loved her instantly but it will be a while before she can accept that - she is so young and doesn't understand the unconditional love parents have for their children. I am so thankful that my husband has the patience of a saint! This has to be so hard for him because your gut instinct is to try to cram 14 years into a day! So we are trying to take it slow...

td, I am so glad that the reunion is going well. I'm sure that your dh's dd will realize very soon how much she is loved by you both! Congrats!!

This may not be what you are looking for as an answer but here I go. This is actually a question that hits home for me. I am the birth father to several children and a strong supporter of fathers rights. Let me explain a little about my situation. Me and my wife have three children together, two of which WE placed in an open adoption. I am also the birth father to a child I had out of wedlock with another woman when I was much younger. Me and the young lady which I had a child out of wedlock with obviously did not work out. She did not place our child in adoption but yet left without notice with my daughter. To my horror I was to find out I had no rights as a father, that yes I had partial custody but without her current address I could not even get a court order to see my daughter. I just find it very unfair to believe that a birth father has to pay child support (not arguing with child support) if requested but has no say so in there child's life. Things now have worked out with my daughter so far in that her mother has decided to contact me but yet I feel like I have to jump through hoops or face the possibility of never seeing my daughter. As far as the 2 children me and my wife have placed in adoption, I was able to make the decision with my wife. I feel I must also add the reasons for placing them for adoption. Our first child is autistic which honestly played a role in deciding about both adoptions. For the first adoption the big reason was fear of sever postpartum which my wife had with our first child to the extent she had to be hospitalized. With the second child was due to my current medical condition (advanced Black Lung) which required way to much care for me that we would not be able to care for a newborn. Ok I really ran my mouth too much here but I hope this was helpfull.

I have a 20 yr old son and we too have discussed this issue. Having 2 adopted teens we have all discussed the issues surrounding pregnancies and the difficult decisions that have to be made. For our son it came down to NOT being in a position where he would have to scour the registries to make certain he wasn't losing a child. He has tried to be very responsible about not only 'protection' , but also relationship issues. He has stopped being a 'man-slut' as the kids refer to it these days. [ edit; I just reread this and I am in no way saying your son was or is one.lol Just saying that when ours learned about tis registry, he realized it was up to him to KNOW if and when he may have become a father.]We had a situation like the ones you have asked about. Our youngest child was adopted in a private, open adoption. After her birth,it became obvious that the fathers name on the birth certificate was incorrect. The race of the child did not match the description of the person whose name she had given. B-mom insisted it was the right name, and the child was his. As time went on, she eventually admitted that , although she had hoped it would be her boyfriends child, it did not look to be. She was upset because according to her, she was a victim of date rape. [ he later denied this aspect] However she was 15, and he was 42, at the time. So she wanted him to have nothing to do with raising the baby. [ that besides other , not so good things] So, I was comfortable with going ahead with the adoption even though we may have had the incorrect name as the father. [ eventually we opened the adoption with the real bfather but that has since failed and I think her initial gut reaction was correct.]

It's called child sexual abuse when a 42 year old man has sex with a 15 year old.

It's called child sexual abuse when a 42 year old man has sex with a 15 year old.__________________No kidding. ;[Apparently, she told him she was 19, and he told her he was 23 so....Anyway, that was 17 years ago and kind of water under the bridge. Those facts were what kept the adoption from being disrupted by the bfather. He knew that her age would be a problem for him, even though she lied about it to him. The courts still frown on it.