Legal Question in Family Law in Pennsylvania

Re: Signing over rights and Child Support

Adoption is a way to end ongoing support, but the past support judgments will still have to be dealt with.

Re: Signing over rights and Child Support

Thank you for your question regarding the effect of an adoption on a child support obligation. In particular, you inquired about the effect of an adoption on child support arrears. There are not enough facts to fully answer your question, but perhaps this will give you a place to start.

First, as you are probably already aware, a step parent adoption (in which the child's step father is the adoptive parent, as here) will have the effect of terminating your husband's obligation for ongoing child support. It will also terminate his parental rights; He will no longer have a right to visitation or any other contact, whether by phone or mail. It is not necessarily certain the step parent will be able to adopt the child in question. Although step parent adoptions are relatively straight forward, the court will nevertheless want to ensure the adopting step father and mother are married, have a stable relationship, and that the adopting step parent is not a drug abuser, etc. Assuming there are no disqualifying problems, the step parent adoption should be relatively simple -- if your husband consents.

Second, child support arrears are not automatically discharged in the event of a step parent adoption. However, your husband's ex-wife could voluntarily discharge the arrears, provided the child support obligation was not assigned to the state in consideration for an award of financial assistance, for example. Pennsylvania law may control on that point, depending on where the divorce judgment/child support order was entered. Nevertheless, assuming the obligation was not assigned to the state, nothing in the law precludes the ex-wife from giving up the accumulated arrears.

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