My husband and I have cared for his biological niece for 10 years, she will be 12 in June. We are finally setting forth to adopt for her. She deserve this, we deserve it! We are setting to terminate the fathers rights who hasn't ever been with her. We are doing this through a paralegal. The adoption is being done through the state adoptions in CA. So with her, the papers were sent to her through the adoption agency, and she has at this point decided not to sign! She wants us to agree to visitation over the summers. She said unless we give this to her she will not sign. So at this point I would like to just terminate like we did through the paralegal for her father! She has told family that she will show up to court and fight us! Does she have a chance to take her from us? Does she really have rights? We have supported this child for 10 years without one dime from her,, we are almost afraid to have her served to terminate her parental rights. She would want us to put that little girl on a plane to fly two states away every summer. Do you think the judge will just see that she abandoned her 10 years ago?
Worried! Scared, and so confused,,
Family of Thank you

Thank your paralegal and hire a real family law lawyer. This one could get very tricky.

Someone should be along and move this to the family law section where hopefully one of our lawyers will address it. We have several from CA that should be able to give you the best advice available on the internet.

This is about adoption, and should probably stay in adoption.

I agree though--upgrade from the paralegal to a real family law attorney.

This is going to get expensive and nasty.

Last I checked, too--CA is one of very few states that allows contracts between birth parents and adoptive parents. She may well be within her rights to negotiate with you.

You're definitely going to need a lawyer to sort this out.

This is about adoption, and should probably stay in adoption.

I agree though--upgrade from the paralegal to a real family law attorney.

This is going to get expensive and nasty.

Last I checked, too--CA is one of very few states that allows contracts between birth parents and adoptive parents. She may well be within her rights to negotiate with you.

You're definitely going to need a lawyer to sort this out.

Fair enough - but the line between adoption and family law is pretty thin. I sent a PM to a few of the CA folk to make sure they see this.

It just gets me so upset, we have raised this child. Without ANY help from her --- she lives two states away and has made no effort to contact us. Did I fail to state,, she has 5 other children and left them several times,, not one graduated from high school, she is bi-polar and manic depressant, and now runs a daycare in another state! Why should we at this point have to pay another dime for this!

Does this matter if the mom lives in another state than CA and we live in CA

It just gets me so upset, we have raised this child. Without ANY help from her --- she lives two states away and has made no effort to contact us. Did I fail to state,,, she has 5 other children and left them several times,,, not one graduated from high school, she is bi-polar and manic depressant, and now runs a daycare in another state! Why should we at this point have to pay another dime for this!

Because as far as we know she is still the legal mother and that's the way the world works.

Yeah... it sucks. But that's how it goes. The condition of the mother doesn't really factor into how this law applies.

Does this matter if the mom lives in another state than CA and we live in CA

No. Since you are raising the action, CA will have jurisdiction.

Since the child lives in California it will go though the CA courts. But yes merely not visiting or seeing the child in most states has nothing to do with losing any rights. It may make it harder for them to win much, but she could get the right to visits within the law. And if she does not sign, she could even get the court to work out a program allowing her to start supervised visits, then longer visits and even get the child back.

As noted this is way to important for a paralegal, all they do is fill paper work out. They can not by law even give legal advice.

Get a real attorney, if they fight it, it is going to get real ugly real fast and also very clostly.