Ga Step parent adoption help

My parents were married and divorced when I was two. He gradually stopped seeing me and paying support. My mother remarried a few years after the divorce. My step father adopted me within months of the remarriage. It's a long story as to why my father was absent, why my mother and step father served him with adoption papers, and why he was not seeing me or paying support. I had a step father who came to the plate and I loved, but I remembered my father and life before my step father was in it. As an adult adoptee, I have grieved over these decisions and my mother and adoptive father would give anything to have a do over with what they did based on what my own personal feelings were later in relation to what occurred. This was because biological family connections are very important to me and I was the victim of circumstances between people who were young and acted based on emotion and without a far reaching eye. I also later discovered my father's family was terribly upset with the decision and assumed their own connections were severed when my father's rights were taken. My grandmother was particularly beside herself. Some of their being hindered to persue their own contact with me was the fact that my mother's family was respected and did well and my father's family was uneducated and felt intimidated. I have been in contact again with my father and his family again, but I can never regain what I lost or potentially could have had. I feel as if my adoptive father would have been in my life and given me all he did without a piece of paper and I would have had the benefit of a father who might have later grown up and an extended family and cousins I would have never lost. PLEASE think carefully about step parent adoptions. Some are not necessary and can cause long term damage to the child who had no voice in its taking place. Please do all you can to encourage parental and extended family interaction with the child. Also consider the financial support. Money coming in for a child can pay for many things that might not be able to be afforded after an adoption. Paying child support is required and you can see it happens. Saying this, child support is the least of the benefits of having your own parent in your life. I am not saying all step parent adoptions are not good, but there are some that should never happen. Please think of the importance of heritage, extended family, and a parent who just needs to grow up. Also, please don't put your own prejudices and dislike of the parent in your decision making. It isn't about your own hurts and upset. Please resconsider since you have opposition from the father. If he appears to fight it in any way, I would let it go. Make him pay the support and create positive relations with him so you all can be a unified family of support for the child. When you adopt, your child loses their original name, identity, and even access to their original birth certificate. The child can be loved by the step parent without such a drastic measure. If you have to go through with an adoption, at least save a copy of the original birth certificate for your child. Otherwise, when grown, they will have to have a court order.

Hello, I am also starting down the same path... and hoping to at least begin it myself! Have you had any luck? I keep coming across attorney websites, and honestly just need to know what forms I need to start with!

In your case since you have failed the first time around I would just refer to this [URL="http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/stepparent-adoption-a-resource-book/15460109?productTrackingContext=search_results/search_shelf/center/1"]book[/URL].This take you step by step on how to go about this process, as well as helping choose the best procedure to go about [URL="http://www.stepparent-adoption.org/"]Stepparent Adoption[/URL].I HIGHLY recommend it. It helped me, so I know it will help anyone.I would also go to this helpful website[URL="http://www.stepparent-adoption.org/"] Stepparent-Adoption.org[/URL]If the facts show that either failure to support or failure to communicate with the child for at least a year, but not both, it is still possible for a court to dispense with the requirement of the absent parents consent to the adoption because of abandonment, but the procedure is a little more complicated. In this instance, the law requires a Probation Department investigation and report concerning the absent parent's neglect of parental responsibilities. The court considers both the testimony of the parties to the adoption, and the findings of the probation investigation, in deciding whether the absent parent has abandoned the child. This procedure requires two separate legal petitions, one to terminate parental rights and a second to adopt the child. Two separate court orders are required. Also, notice of the proposed adoption and termination of rights must be given not only to the absent parent, but to certain other relatives of that parent as well. Once the court decides that the absent parent abandoned the child, the matter proceeds as in an independent adoption.

I told someone else on this forum and I will also tell you: You can get your ex on Abandonment. If the facts show that either failure to support or failure to communicate with the child for at least a year, but not both, it is still possible for a court to dispense with the requirement of the absent parents consent to the adoption because of abandonment, but the procedure is a little more complicated. In this instance, the law requires a Probation Department investigation and report concerning the absent parent's neglect of parental responsibilities. The court considers both the testimony of the parties to the adoption, and the findings of the probation investigation, in deciding whether the absent parent has abandoned the child. This procedure requires two separate legal petitions, one to terminate parental rights and a second to adopt the child. Two separate court orders are required. Also, notice of the proposed adoption and termination of rights must be given not only to the absent parent, but to certain other relatives of that parent as well. Once the court decides that the absent parent abandoned the child, the matter proceeds as in an independent adoption. In your case I would go to stepparent-adoption.org, they take you Step by Step through the process and has Stepparent Adoption Laws for all 50 states. Its really a great site that has many resouces, one in particular Stepparent Adoption: A Resource Book By Wendelyn D. Osorio, this is a new and revised version of the previous book which is great and very helpful. I think this is you best bet!