Legal Question in Family Law in Colorado
I have a daughter whom is 11 yrs old. Her biological father disappeared 5 months before she was born only to turn up 1 wk after birth. I offered him paper work for child support and parenting time but he refused and disappeared again. When my daughter was 2 yrs old he came back and said he wanted to try to be a family, I hesitated as there is a domestic violence history (only 1 incident was reported and he was charged, however I was an idiot and dropped the restraining order and I went back with "our daughter" to try one more time). When I realized he had not changed I ended the relationship for the final time. That was almost 8 yrs ago. Since then he contacted about 4 yrs ago insisting he be part of her life to which I responded he was un-welcome and needed to stay away, as he has NEVER paid child support nor has he legally acknowledged paternity ( he is NOT on the birth certificate and there has never even been a court order to determine because child support enforcement has never been able to find him). I did have an open case through child support enforcement as I was getting state aid through El Paso county CO. I opted not to keep the case open after so many yrs of the office being un-able to find him and also being un-able to find him myself through various internet and social media. He found me on Face Book about 2 months ago to which I did engage in msgs back forth with him. He also contacted other members of my family ALL of whom told he was unwelcome due to the violent nature of our past and the fact that he has been gone so long. On 3-5-16 he showed up on my front porch insisting he be apart of my daughters life. I then told him he had 3 seconds to leave or I would call the cops.. He did leave with no further confrontation. I am now in a relationship for more than 3 yrs, we are not legally married nor do we share any accounts or claim each other on taxes or "own" anything together( are we common law married?). My partner and I do want to be married and my partner DOES want to adopt my daughter as he and my daughter do claim each other as father and daughter. Does the biological father even have rights at this point? And can my partner adopt? what about back and current child support from the biological father?
1 Answer from Attorneys
Yes, the biological father has rights at this point. Your boyfriend needs to quit "thinking" about adopting the child and you need to quit "wanting" her to be adopted. If you really want that to happen, you need to actually retain a lawyer and get it done. You have the ingredients to terminate the biological father's rights, but just sitting around thinking about it isn't good enough.
If you don't take action then you are likely to find that the biological father is going to start asserting his rights and you will no longer have the option of adoption. If the biological father is smart enough to hire an attorney, you could be in for a lot of unpleasantness. You may also lose your opportunity to seek retroactive child support if you don't pursue it in the right way.
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