Legal Question in Family Law in Tennessee

Re: step parent adoption

As residents of TN, you probably should do the adoption here. My advice would be to first have an agreement that the child move here to TN to live with you and your wife for several months, and then file here after the child has been living here long enough (I believe it is six months, but I haven't looked at the statue on that issue in a while).

As to what "forms" you need, if you think you want to do it yourself, I suggest you buy the book attorney Dawn Coppock has written on adoption and try to read it to understand the process. And that will probably be about as good as trying to perform your own root canal after reading a book on dentistry.

Find an attorney and work with the attorney.... meaning have the attorney advice you on the entire process and to handle all of the paperwork. In other words, just like anyone would deal with an attorney, and forget about trying to do this yourself.