I am a single mother of a 14 year old her father lives out of state and does not pay child support which he is cort order to do so. My question is how can i go about terminateing his parental rights because he will not summit to on his own or by me asking him to do so, remind you that he does nothing for her nor has he in the past 9 or 10 years can you please help me.

ldyastrid

Just because the father is a deadbeat ... if child support is court ordered... he HAS to pay - one way or another. He gets arrears if he doesn't pay - when he files his taxes, they intercept his taxes and it goes to you.

If the father has had no contact and not paying support that is court ordered, he has already terminated his rights - not legally, but what would be the reason to legally terminate his rights? I don't see the advantage you or the child would have.

If an order has not been established - get one established. If you are worried about him coming back and saying "if I pay support, I have a right to see my child/ren" - child support and visitation are two separate issues - one having NOTHING to do with the other... even if someone is supposed to pay and doesn't, that doesn't take away their rights for visitation...

If a parent has been non-existant in a childs life for years and comes back saying they want to see their child, you can go to court and insist on supervised visitation.

Bottom line - whatever is best for the child - terminating rights when none are exercised anyway doesn't really do anything anyway ... except stop any further responsibility of support.

RickJ

mod note: split from other thread.

ScottGem

And what do you think termination of rights will get you. Effectively he's not exercising his rights so why bother terminating them. Courts are VERY reluctant to grant a TPR, usually its only done if there is someone waiting to adopt or the parent is a danger to the child.

But Idy is right, you should be concentrating on getting the support he owes not trying to get rid of him.

macksmom

Unless you have a spouse that is going to adopt the child...you won't be able to get his rights terminated merely because he is not paying child support or seeing the child.

If you have a spouse willing to adopt the child then you could file to have his rights terminated if he hasn't made any attempt to contact the child AND hasn't paid child support for a year (this time frame may vary state to state).

What you should do is work on getting child support.