I have a 5 year old daughter, her father who was never married to me left us about 3 years ago. The department of child support just found him and we are getting penuts and is behind over 10k in support. He has not seen my daughter and she doesn't know who he is. My fiancée is who she recognized as her father and he wishes to adopt her. How can I terminate his rights and have my soon to be husband adopt her?

He has to agree to the adoption. Have you contacted a good family attorney to help you with this? You cannot terminate his rights - he must agree to this. You should also be married for at least a year before he can adopt her as well.

You have the ex sign the paper work your attorney fills out signing over his rights, since any new support ends if he does, he should be glad to.

By the way I'm in Florida, Miami dade county. I heard you could use abandonment since he is missing in action so to speak.

He will still have to be served, and it is a lot faster and a lot cheaper if he will just sign, The fact he has paid some support each payment is considered normally as a contact,

Also they will normally wish to see you married and married for about a year before the filing for adoption.

Abandonment ( as a word, the legal use or criminal charge is another issue) is used for custody issues and would more be used for you to change the custody agreement, take away court ordered visitation and the such, not normally for adoption. It can be used, but normally at that point you don't know where he is. But it can be tried, if he is served court papers and he does not appear ( just blows off the court) they will or perhaps consider it.

You heard wrong. While abandonment MIGHT be used as grounds if you can't find the father, that's not the case here. An adoption requires the agreement of both parents. Or a good faith effort needs to be made to find the other parent for their agreement.

I'm not sure what the problem is here. You know where he is. I'm sure he would love to get out of paying support which is what will happen when the adoption is approved. So why would he not agree?

You need an attorney to prepare the adoption petition. The attorney will prepare the paperwork for the bio father to sign. This should not be a big deal.

Actually I don't know where he is, all I know is that $75 a month gets sent to me from the child support enforcement agency from him. There had been zero contact since he left.

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Originally Posted by gkraver

Actually I don't know where he is, all I know is that $75 a month gets sent to me from the child support enforcement agency from him. There had been zero contact since he left.

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But his whereabouts are known, so your attorney should be able to find him.