[iiMLadyJ]

First off, I live in New York state, currently in Westchester County however will be moving to Putnam County in less than 3 weeks and that is when the step parent adoption process will begin.

Here's our story: My daughter will be 6 years old in Aug. Her biological father and I were together for about 4 years but it seems like the only reason why he was there before was because we were together. After we broke up, his relationship with her ended. He got physical with me which resulted in an order of protection and I moved out of that city with my daughter. Now even with an order of protection on he still contacted me(police don't really seem to care as many times as I have notified them, nothing has happened to him) but still made no effort to see his daughter by contacting family members or court involvement to file for visitation. My husband and I have been married since February of 2012 and have a 6 month old together and he would like to adopt my daughter. We have all lived together for over a year, he has been financially supporting her, emotionally supporting her through everything, he has her listed under his employment as she gets her health insurance from him and to her, he is daddy.

Now we have done some reading and internet research(yes, we know you can't go on everything you read on the web) but we can not afford an attorney/lawyer to do this whole process so we are going in it alone and seeing how we turn out. If we can do this right, then we can save a ton of money and get the adoption done. With that being said, we read that a termination of rights can be done based on "child abandonment" which according to NYS law is no support or contact for 6+ months which based on that alone, I assume we can do since it has been more than 6 months for both. However we have also read a lot of sites that say if you are doing an adoption WITH consent to get a lawyer and not so much saying that when doing it WITHOUT consent so we were wondering what would be the best way to go about it? Should we go in with his consent or go in with the intent to forcefully terminate his rights? Luckily for us, I was able to contact her biological dad and he agrees to the adoption so he said he will sign whatever forms or go to court to consent so I figured it would be easier to go this route without a lawyer since he agrees so there will be no battles in court.

Ultimately, we want to make this a quick and smooth process without putting us in debt. We are filling and doing so without an attorney and WITH the consent of her biological dad. If anyone knows the steps we have to take and the stepparent process in general, any information/advice on it would be great and also if anyone knows of any site/place where we can possibly get free help with filling out the forms, that would be a great help as well.

Thanks for reading!

[ScottGem]

I hate it when people tell me they cannot afford an attorney. Because generally they cannot afford NOT to have a attorney. To do an adoption without an attorney is risking something going wrong. Either now or in the future.

Since the bio father will consent to the adoption, this should be simple and relatively inexpensive. Have you even tried to price an attorney's services?

At the very least you should use a service to prepare the paperwork. Like this one:
Stepparent Adoption Documents - Adopting Your Stepchild

As far as terminating the bio father's rights, you need to do this in a package deal. The TPR has to be done as paert of the adoption proceeding.

[GV70]

Stepparent Adoption Documents for New York

[Fr_Chuck]

If you have consent, you "may" get it down without an attorney, without an attorney not going to be easy and you can't really afford not to have one.

So when he objects in court what motion will you file. When he lies and claim you were not allowing him to see child, what will be your answer in court. Issues of protective order, judge will not accept it was just broken and nothing done.

I would say you have less than a 20 percent chance without the attorney