Hi,

My husband is stationed in Japan in the Navy, I have a 2 year old with my ex who is also in the military stationed her in California. We plan on joining my husband in Japan, the only problem is since my daughter is not his biological child, he would have to adopt her in order to get her SOFA status, which will allow her to stay in Japan. My ex has not been involved in my daughters life and has never paid support, recently he has been served child support, and he's pissed and demands he gets joint custody so his child support will be lowered when they establish it. He will not consent to the adoption. I realize having his parental right will be very hard to do, and will take a long time, my husband is on a time frame to get us over there. What can we do to get my daughter adopted fast? And how can we go about getting his parental rights terminated? What are my chances?

If the biological father is not a danger to your child, and refuses to voluntarily relinquish parental rights, your chances are VERY slim.

You cannot FORCE someone to relinquish. A judge can grant an involuntary TPR in cases where the biological parent is a danger to the child.

Your only real chance is that you make a deal with the biological father that you'll drop any and all back support if he'll relinquish rights. If he absolutely refuses to do so, you are probably out of luck.

As far as a timetable--custody cases can take a loooooong time to finalize. If he refuses to sign over his rights, you're looking at a fight that you probably won't win, that will cost you a lot of money in legal costs, and that will probably drag on for YEARS.

Who told you that your husband needs to adopt in order to qualify for SOFA? If the spouse qualifies, her biological child also qualifies. Unless this has changed* which I cannot imagine it has.

I would clarify this with JAG.