[mom4tm]

Hello all,
I want to start with letting everyone know here how great it is to be able to ask, vent, and share experiences.
My husband and I have been together for 4 1/2 years and married for 1 1/2. He has been in my daughter's life since she was 3, my daughter is now 7. She as acknowledged my husband as dad, knows that she has a biological father and that he lives far away and we don't have his address or number. Her BF hasn't seen her since 2002 and he's paid support 1-2 times a year since the county filed an order for him to do so. It's going on a year since my daughter received any cs. We live in CA and BF lives in either VA or NC. We don't know and when the county tried to serve him contempt of court order papers, they couldn't find him either.
We filed the adoption request and sent a copy to the social services last week.
We know that we are going to have to terminate BF's parental rights. Should we start compiling my attempts to locate him now or is that pre-mature at this point?
What questions should we ask the social service department when we speak to them next.

Any advice or information will be greatly appreciated!

[CrazyForMark]

Congratulations on getting the process started. We hired an atty which I'm not sure we should have but I didn't know if the BF was going to fight. In my case - it's the social worker (or for me it's the probation officer) that was the most help to me! She located the BF and got his consent after my atty only was able to use the address that I gave (which we knew wasn't any good). Before the PO found him the atty did try to serve him at the address she had but was unsuccessful because his father denied the service. I showed up at the cs hearing in hopes that he would be there because I was going to serve him. He wasn't there but I did meet with the attorney for cs and he was very helpful and I passed his information to the PO on my case and I think that had alot to do with her finding him. Our termination of rights hearing was canceled and now we are waiting for my atty to get the date for the adoption hearing.

Good luck to you!

[mom4tm]

Congratultions to you, sounds like you'll be moving along hopefully smoothly now.
Is the probation officer someone that social worker works with? We don't have the money to hire a lawyer right now and are trying to do what we can. We filed the adoption under willfull failure.

Thanks againe,
mom4tm

[CrazyForMark]

In the county where I am - the probation officer takes the role of the social worker in the adoptions. They might not do this all the time but in my case they did. Many times during this I had wished that I had not hired an atty. I was so nervous that the bf would have fought it and so we hired an atty. I'm just so grateful that it is coming to a wonderful end. Adoption hearing is on Dec. 26th at 9am. Good luck to you and your family!