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Ok, long story...Biological father signed adoption consent. He and I had a verbal agreement that, since he is $13,000 behind in support, if he pays the rest of the adoption fees, $1,300, I will not pursue back support. The court has ordered him to pay the $1,300 and he is mad. He is now threatening to withdraw his consent and is going to write the courts and request visitation. Current order states at all reasonable times and places. He had court appointed supervised visits 11 years ago, and I was required to take the child once a week to his apartment where the visits took place. He had 3 visits. After the 3rd visit, he was not even home when I arrived to drop the child off. This also happened the following week, at which time I was advised to stop wasting my time and that if he wanted to continue having visitation he would have to readdress the courts to modify visits. He never did. He has now moved to Alabama and the child still resides in Indiana. We have not even had the home study done yet. We have already set it in our minds that we will have to pay the rest of the fees, but now we are not sure we should proceed since he is threatening to throw a wrench in the whole situation. Does anyone have a similar story, and how should we handle this.
My son's biological mother also did not exercise the visitation agreement set up when he was a baby/toddler and would go months or years without seeing him, and then moved to another state, with no contact from her for years, until she was notified of the petition for me to adopt. She protested initially and an investigator was assigned by the courts to interview all parties, review whatever documentation there was and write a recommendation for the judge.
Her opposition to the adoption, carried very little weight when held up against the 7 continuous years of no contact or effort on her part by then and the fact that our son at that point, had no memory of her at all and was fully bonded to me and I had been solely fulfilling the role of mom in his life for some time. The investigator recommended the adoption, which was finalized on my 29th birthday.
My point is, if there has been no relationship and no contact for 11 yrs, then the standard for abandonment has been met, regardless of what he declares now, unless there has been ongoing contact other than physical visitation. It may vary from state to state, but in our state, phone contact "counted". It was a non-issue for us as there had been none, but I'm not sure if that's the case for you as well. Have you already filed?
It's important to know that this is not the end of the story. After an entire childhood of showing either confusion, anger or indifference at the thought of her, when he was 18 he thoughtfully concluded that he wanted, and needed, to meet her and her other children, and we helped make it happen for him. That was 3 1/2 yrs ago now and they are in still in contact, though somewhat sporadically and though the relationship with her has been a challenging one for him to negotiate, he is very committed to a sibling relationship with her other children and to acknowledging his whole life story, including her part in it, and knows that the sum of who he is includes that as well.
Back then, all that mattered to me was making sure that my relationship with J was legally secure- that if anything ever happened to DH, I would be his parent in the eyes of the law and not vulnerable to anyone else's claims. I also wanted the legal reality to match our daily reality. I wanted the government to say "You're his mom." And it felt awesome when they did. And his childhood was secure in that way.
Now? I know I'm his mom no matter what any piece of paper or government says, and that this is a reality that we create between us that needs no one's sanction or recognition, and is impenetrable by any other person as it involves no other person. Any other relationship he has, including with his biological mother, is a separate relationship from the one we have and has no bearing on US, unless we make it so.
I just like to advise parents going into a stepparent adoption (especially since the stepparent adoption process is, in it's nature, contentious and adversarial), to remember that the adoption does not sever the biological ties and the truth of the child's whole life story and that the adoption is not the "end", there may be still a lifetime of relationship, in one way or another, between the child and the parent who is TPR'd, many years down the road. It took me many years to be at peace with that fact, and I wish I had started making my peace with it much sooner than I did.
Truth will out, so if the truth bears out your case, then do your best to proceed with confidence. But also do your best to take money out of the equation. The adoption should be about the child, not about back child support and it makes me uncomfortable when they are tied together, as it muddles motives on both parts.
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Wow, you really helped put it into perspective. I know with him it IS about the money, and I believe I to have made parts of it about the money, too. I love my son, and my heart breaks for him when he tells me he feels abandoned. My husband and I want to do our best by our son, and I am allowing myself to get frustrated. The truth will prevail, and I will do my best to remember this, and give it to God.
We have made it to the homestudy, which is where we stalled because of the verbal agreement we had. Now that we have found out he's not going to pay for it, we are trying to come up with the money for the home study and the rest of the attorney's fees ourselves. And since he has stated he now wants to revoke the consent he gave and wants visitation, we are unsure of how to proceed. Should we go ahead and pay the fees ourselves and risk him objecting to the adoption, or do we let him try for visitation? (I did read that, in our state, he only had 30 days to revoke his consent. Thereafter, he can not revoke it.)
I adopted my 2 step-kids. Their mother signed the consent to adoption, then at the last min she changed her mind and filed a petition to revoke her consent. We went to court and they said because she had not been a part of their life and because she knew what she was signing that they were approving the adoption.