Hello everyone!
I have an 11 yr old son that has his bio father's last name. We have not seen him or heard from him for 10 1/2 yrs. I have full custody of my son. Now that my son is getting older my husband and I would like to change his last name to ours. My husband has cared for my son since he was 1 yr old. He is the only dad he knows. I filed the petition for name change at my local court. I published the notice in the newpaper since it's part of the process. My cort hearing is tomorrow but now I have one major problem, I have no proof of service because I have no idea where the bio father is. I haven't seen or heard from him in a long time. He has never paid child support and has never tried to contact my son. My question is: Now what will happen in court? What will the judge tell me since I have no proof of service?
Please help.

Thank you

Take in the article you posted in the paper... I would think that is all you can do if you truthfully have no way of being able to find the father.

YOu can take your bill in from the paper to show the length of time that it was published. This may satisfy as your proof of service.

Actually the newspaper filed a copy of the notice.

Thank you very much for all your help. I hope everything goes well tomorrow.

I'm curious about something here. Why is your husband not adopting your son, why just changing the name?

You seem to have gotten a list of procedures to attempt to locate the bio father. All you need to do is show the court you followed those procedures.

That's what we wanted to do from the start, but we thought this was going to be much faster. Are you familiar with adoption? What do I have to do? Do I have to get an attorney?

While the adoption process may be longer, I think its worth it. You have to go through a similar process and I would suggest an attorney. But you can talk to the people at family court and they probably have an instructions booklet on what you need to do.

I agree with scott hon, adoption is the getter way.
It is always best to have a lawyin these situations so that the ex can't come crawling out of the wood work and sue on a technicality later. Never take chances in a family law case.