Legal Question in Family Law in Virginia

Re: Step-parent adoption

Assuming that New Hampshire law is similar to Virginia's, the law presumes that the person listed on the child's birth certificate is in fact the father for all legal purposes unless a court of proper jurisdiction has ruled otherwise on the matter.

Consequently, all required notices of the propspective adoption would necessarily have to be sent to (and properly served upon)this fellow listed on the birth certificate.(Of course, as an inducement to obtain his consent to the adoption, you could always offer to pay for a private DNA test to corroborate your claim.)

Re: Step-parent adoption

Addendum to previous answer: a child born of a marriage is presumptively (in law) the child of the father who is married to the child's mother at the time of birth(or, if the birth occurs within a specified time period after the dissolution of said marriage).

Re: Step-parent adoption

I agree with the other answers but I think it's not that simple. The last thing you want is an adoption to be overturned because the biological father comes out of the woodwork years later.

While any child conceived during a marriage is presumtively the husband's, that presumption can be rebutted by a simple DNA test. To be safe you have to serve the biological father.

If you don't know where he is then you petition the Court to publish a legal notice in a newspaper of national circulation. This is called due process. Whether the biological father sees it or not is immaterial. As long as you give him due process he cannot thereafter challenge the adoption.

Adoption begins in juvenile and domestic court where, if the father is known, you must bring a petition to divest him of his parental rights and to grant custody to the adoptive father nominee. The Code of Virginia also requires parents and nominees to go through social services training and for a licensed agency to do a home study on the nominee. Once all of this is accomplished, custody is granted and six months later you petition the circuit court to grant the adoption.

You want to do this the right way. An experienced domestic relations lawyer will know how to handle it.

Good luck.