My girlfriend and I have been together for about six years. About two years ago the father of her 7 year old son decided that it would be best to sign over his rights to her. The lawyer took care of everything and things has been fine since. She has always let the grandparents see him whenever they like. She even lets her sons father see him, as long as it is supervised by the grandparents. Recently her sons father and grandparents are becoming, what seems to be sneaky about when and where the father is around. For example we found out that they had planned to leave the boy with his father while they went out. I'm starting to get the feeling that he is regretful of having signed over his rights. Is there any way possible, that he could be trying to gain back his rights without our knowledge? And, has a father ever been granted rights after signing them away?
Child support was droped when he signed over his rights.

He can sneak, but the only worry you should be having right now is would he take his son and down of sight with him? If he does, he and his parents can be charged.

The general consensus on this board, which I happen to agree with, is that you cannot voluntarily sign away your parental rights unless someone is waiting to adopt. In California we have a specific appellate court case that says this that goes back a few years. So, I would think that if a couple stipulated that a dad would surrender his parental rights say in exchange for no child support (the old parental rights for money exchange) and that stipulation became a court judgment before case law in your jurisdiction declared such agreements unenforceable as contrary to public policy, a good argument could still be made to set aside such a judgment since significant public policy issues are involved. This gets into the sometimes rather difficult question of retroactivity of appellate court decisions (like for instance ours in California). I'll leave that issue aside for now since even in California we have no case law directly addressing that question in this context. But suffice it to say that it well may be possible for the dad in this case to have his parental rights restored.

The general consensus on this board, which I happen to agree with, is that you cannot voluntarily sign away your parental rights unless someone is waiting to adopt. In California we have a specific appellate court case that says this that goes back a few years. So, I would think that if a couple stipulated that a dad would surrender his parental rights say in exchange for no child support (the old parental rights for money exchange) and that stipulation became a court judgment before case law in your jurisdiction declared such agreements unenforceable as contrary to public policy, a good argument could still be made to set aside such a judgment since significant public policy issues are involved. This gets into the sometimes rather difficult question of retroactivity of appellate court decisions (like for instance ours in California). I'll leave that issue aside for now since even in California we have no case law directly addressing that question in this context. But suffice it to say that it well may be possible for the dad in this case to have his parental rights restored.



Right, and I would ask what specifically is in the agreement, how it's written, what it says.

He can sneak, but the only worry you should be having right now is would he take his son and down of of sight with him? If he does, he and his parents can be charged.



This is not sound advice - this is a legal board. If the agreement (oral, which could be argued; written, which would be evident) says that the father can only see the child when supervised by the grandparents he can't legally "sneak" and the mother has every right to suspend any sort of visitation unless she is present.

What do you mean by "down of of sight with him"? Do you mean (techically) kidnap the child?

As Cadillac said - lots of factors at play here.