Legal Question in Family Law in South Carolina
Child Adoption with a Step Father
I have remarried and my children are calling this
man Daddy. Their natural father pays no attention to them and has visitation every other weekend. He never takes any time with the children. He sees them every 3-4 months. when he does see them, he takes his partying friends along. My new husband wants to adopt them. What can we do? We have tried to talk to him and he will not give up his rights, but doesn't want anything to do with them. He does pay his child support. But he also has a very single life style. His excuse for not having the children all these months is that he shares an apartment with 2 other men and has no room. He now says he's moving into a house and wants to start taking them again.
1 Answer from Attorneys
Re: Child Adoption with a Step Father
In my state, the natural father would have to voluntarily relinquish his parental rights and consent to the adoption, or your husband (as the petitioner) would have to petition the court to terminate natural dad's rights and allow stepdad to adopt. Among the grounds to involuntarily terminate dad's rights are abandonment (he doesn't see the kids and doesn't make any arrangements to resume custody), nonpayment of support, lack of emotional bond with the children. He pays child support, he told you he wants to see them more often and he's making plans for that to happen, and you know where he lives, so I'm not sure you could pull off abandonment. You might be able to show the court that the father-child relationship is not in the children's best interest. Your children's interests take precedence over yours, dad's, and stepdad's.The best long-term advice I can give you is for stepdad to hire an attorney and/or hire a guardian ad litem to advocate for the children.
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