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aswiftxox · Aug 11, 2009, 06:33 AM

I'm a 21 year old single parent, and my daughter vada will be 2 in oct. her father hasn't seen her or hasn't done anything for her since she was 2mths old. He moved away and maybe called once or twice before her first birthday, saying he was going to send her a gift. But that never happened. So a year later he sends me an email saying he thinks about her everyday and wants to be a part of her life, if he can't he wants to pay child support. But he hasn't seen her in almost 2 years. We are not together because drugs were more important to him than anything else. Now he says he is clean and just got out of jail.

What do I do? I think he is a unfit parent! Because he also has another child that is 6 and when we were together he would make me watch her or leave her with one of his friends to do who knows what.

JudyKayTee · Aug 11, 2009, 06:42 AM

Whether he's fit or unfit, he's the father and has rights if he cares to pursue them. He is entitled to visit with the child. Is there a Court Order concerning support? You cannot strip him of his rights.

He was not properly caring for his older child when you got pregnant with this child?

stevetcg · Aug 11, 2009, 06:44 AM

Well, he cannot just sign his rights over, even if both of you want that. Its not how it works.

If he wants to see the child and is willing to pursue it in court, there is likely little you can do.

If he is clean, maybe he is trying to make amends for his past.

aswiftxox · Aug 11, 2009, 06:54 AM

I field for support when my daughter was 4mths old and we couldn't find him. But he said he got arrested, so wouldn't they see the back child support on there?

Yeah he wasn't taking good care of this other daughter when I was pregnant with mine. When lived together and I would wake up and he was gone and I would ask his daughter where he went and she said he just left. He would be gone from 10am till 12 at night. And if I wasn't there to watch her he would leave her with one of his friends. And his daughters mother would be calling me flipping out wondering why she wasn't with me or him.

ScottGem · Aug 11, 2009, 07:20 AM

First, please pay more attention to posting rules. There is a Read First sticky at the top of the Children forum (where this was moved from) that directs questions of a legal nature to this forum.

Had you checked this forum you would have found a sticky note and hundreds of threads that deal with this issue.

If he is not part of her life then why bother? If he wants to be part of her life now, maybe he has changed. Courts are VERY reluctant to grant a TPR and I see no exception to that here.

If you marry and what your husband to adopt you can revisit terminating his rights at that point.

If you did file an order for support, what happened to it? You should be able to get support retroactive to when you filed.

Synnen · Aug 11, 2009, 09:01 AM

I find it incredibly selfish of YOU to deprive your daughter of her father.

Until you see how he is acting currently, you have no way to judge whether he is a fit parent. People DO change. I mean, look at yourself! You went from a woman who slept with a guy (and got pregnant! How dumb is that?) that neglected his child and did drugs to a caring mother.

Why couldn't he change too?

You can't terminate his rights. Deal with that.

How about working on him having supervised visitations, getting a child support order set up, and custody arrangements/visitation done through the courts instead?