The father of this child has not gone to get him because of financial difficulties in supporting two different families. He has no intention of continuing a relationship with the child that he pays child support for. He feels that it is not fair that two of his children suffer so badly while the one that he pays child support for gets more than half of his paycheck. If he continues to pay child support on time every month will the courts automatically relinquish his rights to the child that he pays child support for if he does not exercise his visitation rights? Or is this something that the mother has to do?

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Originally Posted by krico

If he continues to pay child support on time every month will the courts automatically relinquish his rights to the child that he pays child support for if he does not excercise his visitation rights? Or is this something that the mother has to do?

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Hello k:

The mother CAN'T do it and the courts WON'T do it. They WON'T even do it if he DIDN'T pay child support... Plus he CAN'T even do it himself. Besides, if he isn't USING his parental rights, why would you want them removed??

excon

The mother is looking for sole and legal custody. She has told us that she does not want my son to see me anymore and that she wanted all of my rights to the child relinquished. She is wanting to move out of the country with him because her present husband is in the military and is on detail to relocate at any time.

Then tell the mother to have her husband adopt the child. That's the only way your rights will be severed.

Sole custody is not taking away a fathers visits rights, a father does not have to use them, there is no requirement and he will not lose them for not using them.

The only way to deal is have the step father adopt them

The mother does not want her present husband to have any sort of power over her kids. She has 3 and they are all from different men, She told us she wanted all of the sole and legal custody given to her.

He has not made an effort to go and get the child since may 2010. He was willing to let the mother attempt to leave the country with him and her new husband. He never calls his son and he has unlimited phone privileges to him anytime he wants to talk to him. What is the point? He does not uphold the visitation schedule, and the mother says that he is in violation of the visitation policy whatever that means. I thought that visitation was optional.

I'm confused as to who you are and what your relationship to the situation is. In your original post, you talk in the third person about this situation. But in post #3 you refer to the mother telling "us" and "my son". Then in post #7 you state that "He" hasn't made an effort. This is confusing and make it harder to help.

But, as has been stated, getting sole physical and legal custody is not severing parental rights. The mother is not going to get rights severed and the fathers cannot give up their rights. Again only a court can terminate rights and I don't see that being done here.

I also don't think the mother will get what she wants. A court is going to say that the father (or fathers) are not exercising their visitation rights so why bother do anything. They are unlikely to turn off those rights in case the fathers have changes of heart. She DOES have to go before a court to modify the visitation schedule. Otherwise she can be found in contempt of court if she makes any move that affects the exercise of that schedule. But if the father doesn't protest the court will approve the move.

Since he is paying his child support on time, it's highly unlikely that the court would just "relinquish" his rights even if he doesn't exercise them regularly. Has there ever been a visitation order established? If not, then you can't even argue that he hasn't exercised his rights.