I live in San Mateo County in California. I have two daughters (8 and 4) from a previous relationship. The father has not seen his daughters since my four year old was exactly one week old. They have had no contact with him what so ever. There are no court orders, he does not pay child support but he does provide their health insurance in lieu of not being taken to court, that was our verbal agreement.
When my daughters were born the father did not sign either paternity papers and the girls have my maiden last name.

I have since moved on and have a husband. My husband would like to adopt my daughters so they can officially take the family's last name.

How would I go about getting my daughters last names legally changed to their dad's
(my husband)? Do I have to file for abandonment even though paternity was never established or can we just file for adoption and then terminate the need for the father's health insurance, which I'm sure he wouldn't have a problem with!

Thank you.

There is NO such thing as filing for abandonment. I don't know where you people get this idea.

You file for adoption and get the bio father to relinquish his rights. Sounds like he wouldn't have a problem with that.

Hey Scott,
Thanks for your answer. But answering "I don't know where you people get this idea. "
Seems a little rude to me... after all I was asking a question and this is where you can ask questions isn't it?
So how would I get him to relinguish his rights if there's no such thing as filing for abandonment, I thought that was what I would be doing?
But then again I am asking a question because I don't know.

There are previous threads that discuss this issue. Spending a little time researching before posting would have saved you from asking such a question.

Its simple, you ask him to relinquish his rights. Basically you get an attorney to file an adoption petititon. The attorney will let you know what forms and processes you need to go through.

Only if he refuses to relinquish would you need to go further. In that case, you would be filing for termination of Parental Rights, not abandonment.

Comments on this post
daughter03 (https://www.askmehelpdesk.com/members/daughter03.html) disagrees: No, If Scott wanted to be helpful and answer my question then he wouldn't be so rude in doing so.

First, may I call your attention to the guidelines for using the comments feature found here:

https://www.askmehelpdesk.com/feedback/using-comments-feature-24951.html

I don't deny my answer was on the rude side. But It was accurate. What's more both responses gave you the best answer to your question. If I didn't want to be helpful I would have ignored your question totally. The people here VOLUNTEER their time to help others. If sometimes we get a little short from answering the SAME question over and over, well so be it. If users would spend a little more time researching, they would often find their answer already posted and find they don't need to post their own rehash of the same question. This woould allow the VOLUNTEERS to spend their time on questions that are less likely to have answers already posted.