[Canoe]

Hi, I have a question that I am curious about regarding Birth Father rights. Say a guy impregnates a women and the women does not tell the father about the child and the mother then puts up the baby for adoption. Then say the father finds out about said child a few years later like 2 or 3 years. Now my question is since the birth father never agreed to the adoption and would have contested the adoption if he knew about the child what rights does the birth father have if he wants get custody of his biological child?

[RavenSong]

I'm not sure what your legal rights as a birthfather would be in this situation. But I do want to point out that the emotional damage that would be done to this child would be enormous if he or she were to be torn away from the adoptive family after two or three years. At this point in time, the adoptive parents are the only parents this child knows and loves. They have bonded into a family unit. I would implore you to think of the child's best interests first and put your own needs and desires away for right now.

One possibility you might want to explore is if the adoptive parents are willing to open the adoption a bit. If they already have an open adoption (OA) with the birthmom, they very well might be willing to open it up with you, too. If this isn't possible, you might be able to persuade them to send you annual updates and photographs until the child is 18 years of age. (This is called a "semi-open" adoption.)

Do you know if the adoption was handled by an agency? If so, your best bet is to contact the agency and go from there. I know that when my son's adoption was semi-opened up (he was a teenager by then), his birthfather was also provided updates and photos. It's worth a shot.

Please think this through carefully. I highly doubt that you would be able to obtain custody of this child after so long of a time period...it is practically unheard of, as far as I know. If you do pursue legal recourse and fail, I doubt that the parents would be willing to provide you with any updates at all.

[Cjmeck]

I would imagine, and honestly hope for the best interests of the child, that there would be nothing a person could do after that period of time. I know for a fact that in states with a punative father registry (like Ohio) that a birthfather has only a certain period of time (30 days in OH) to come forward after the child's birth. Ohio basically works like this: if you have sex with a woman, you are on notice that the woman COULD be pregnant and its your responsibility to follow up on that. "I didn't know she was pregnant" is just not enough in this state to overturn an adoption. And most adoptions are finalized with one year of placement and once finalized, there is little anyone can do at all. It would be extremely rare, and practically non-existant for this to occur. Not sure if your question is hypothetical or a personal issue, but to the best of my knowledge, this is the reality.

[Dickons]

You need to check the laws in your state. But in reality you need to think of the child, not to say you should just give up but I would think your options are limited in what you can do right now.

If you find out you have no legal recourse...

1. Sign up for contact when the child searches for you. I think most states have some type of registry or means to do that.

2. If an adoption agency was used, sign up there as well. You could ask the agency if they would contact the parents to feel out how they would be to any type of open adoption visitation, they may be willing to contact or they may not.

3. Start a journal that you update even just on your child's birthday. Write your thoughts on missing the child, what you did that year etc...just something for the child to know you cared enough to do it.

4. When the child is old enough, put your contact info on the registry sites on the internet and keep your contact info updated.

Kind regards,
Dickons

[loveajax]

I usually tell people in any situation when they are unsure of their rights to contact an attorney to see what they are. I suspect that the adoption is finalized and there is probably nothing you can do to "overturn" it (even if you wanted to....which others said probably would not be the "best" thing to do...I am an adoptive parent, so I am revealing my own bias!). I am sorry that you did not know about the pregnancy or adoption plan. I think every state has some kind of "law" on how it deals with terminating an "unknown" birth father's rights...either through a putative fathers' registry, publication in a newspaper, etc.

I also suggest that you think about trying to reach out to the child's a parents if you are interesting in getting to know them or your child. (I am assuming this is "you," and not a hypothetical). Good luck.