Hello My name is Leah I'm 28 and I have a 10 year old daughter named Lisa, When I was 18 years old I married a man named Tony and had my beautiful daughter, when she was a year and a half old after 2 years of marriage we split . I made multiple attempts to allow him to have a relationship with his daughter and he does not care to. When she was about four and a half I met the love of my life we moved in together and after about a year she asked him if she could call him Daddy (having no one else to be Daddy) he said of course , after 6 years and having 2 more children with my husband our daughter Lisa wants to be adopted by him so we can be a real family and she can have our last name too. My Ex would like to not pay child support to a child he does not want to see and my husband would really Like to adopt her. I live in Tx and would like to save myself as much pain as well as cost as possible what do I need to do from here ?

1. Get a lawyer.
2. Ask the ex to relinquish parental rights
3. File adoption paperwork.
4. Go to court to finalize adoption.

Yes, really need an attorney, as long as ex is willing to sign away to allow adoption, no problem. Lawyer writes up the paper work, ex signs the paper work, and it is presented to the court.