My child's mother left the state of Indiana the last Sunday of June. My son was 3 at the time and is 4 now. I am still paying child support while she has been gone since June. I also have her biological son as well, a 5 year old. I have raised him since she was 4 months pregnant and consider him my child and want to know what I can do about getting custody of both of them and stopping my child support.

Abandonment, in most states, means leaving a child with no adult supervision. These children are being supervised by you, so they have not been abandoned.

You ou should have gone to court a while ago to file for custody and child support. Call your local family court tomorrow and they will advise you how to get the ball rolling according to the laws in your area.

You do not file abandonment, you file for change of custody and for change of child support. Abandonment can be the reason you request this change.

What do you think filing for abandonment will get you? As noted abandonment is not something you file for, it may be used as grounds for something else, but you don't file for it.

Why are you paying child support and to who? You mentioned your child's mother, rather than ex wife. So I assume you were never married, but she filed for child support when your son was born. I'm also guessing that either she dropped both boys with you and disappeared or you had them for a regular visitation and she just never picked them up.

In either case, you should have filed for full legal and physical custody of your son long ago. I would have done this after she was gone for a month, nor more that 3. The older boy is a different matter. You have no legal rights with respect to him. If you try to get custody over him, the courts are probably going to require that you find the father or other of his family members to make sure they don't object to your having custody over him.

At the custody hearing, once you are awarded custody, you can ask that any child support order be vacated.

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Originally Posted by Scottgem

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The older boy is a different matter. You have no legal rights with respect to him. If you try to get custody over him, the courts are probably going to require ...

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But in any event OP should seek an order that the mother pay him child support for both children. As it is, OP is apparently required to pay her child support for the youngest child, until the child support order is changed. Additionally, if she receives welfare, the state could seek to collect this CS obligation from him.

Well it sounds like the OP doesn't know where the mother is. But that shouldn't stop him from petitioning for a child support order.

He says he is "still paying child support", and asks about "stopping my child support". This suggests to me that the Indiana CS agency may know where she is, or is collecting CS in any event.