Step parent adoption question?

my husband is trying to adopt my son based on the fact that my sons bio-father (whom my son doesnt know) abandoned him. 1 year w/ no money, 2 yrs w/ no contact. now, since we've served him with a petition for adoption, he's written a letter to me saying that he's wanting to start calling my son and sending him money again- but its clearly in reaction to our lawsuit. our lawyer says that this is somewhat typical, and not to get too worried about it. to ignore him.
in the past he's gone through periods of calling, then a year will go by w/ no call. then he'll start up again. so coming and going is a pattern with him.. do you think that a judge will see it too? we are waiting for a court date. but i get scared that somehow a judge will be merciful and side w/ him- he live halfway across the country- and will never be a stable presence in my sons life- meanwhile, my son doesnt understand why he cant have the same last name as the rest of us.
any input is appreciated!

the state that i live in defines abandonment as 1 year with no money and no contact..so we've got a solid case for abandonment

Some of this depends on the age of your child, but giving up parental rights is a final and very serious step. It is not a matter of whether your son's father has been a "good enough" father, but of whether he has ever been in the picture at all. Frankly, coming and going would go in his favor, because there is still a chance that he would come back. Your lawyer is right if your ex only started asking for contact when he was served with papers, but if he has come back into your son's life before, that will go against you. Although the standard is "the best interest of the child", there is generally a presumption that it would be in the child's best interest to be with his bio-father, if that relationship can be resolved at all.

You say that your son doesn't know his bio-father. Do you mean that they have never met, or have met only many years ago when your son was too small to remember, or do you mean that they aren't close? I can understand that you are frustrated by his on-again, off-again support and contact, but that alone is not enough to sway most judges to break the legal ties entirely, especially if the child is over the age of 3. While I know you would like to be a unified, happy family, that possibility was probably never a great possibility if your son didn't have a father who initiated the move to take away his parental rights.

By the way, the other person is wrong - your child's father does NOT have to voluntarily give up his parental rights in order for this to occur. As an attorney who has worked with a lot of incarcerated parents (mostly mothers), I have frequently had to be the one to explain to them that upon their being sentenced to 20 years in prison, their parental rights had been taken so that the foster parents could adopt their children (usually infants or toddlers), and that they could not get them back when they were released from prison years later.

In order for your husband to legally adopt your son, his father would have to voluntarily terminate his parental rights in court. There is NO WAY around this.

A pattern of calling and not calling is irrelevant. Just because he chooses not to exercise his parental rights does not mean that he should not have them.

The money issue depends on the custody and child support order from the courts - you DO have this in front of you, right? You can bring to the table that he has not been fulfilling his parental responsibilities, so he shouldn't get any parental rights.



raflorsh...
Yes, that's true in the case of parental incarceration or a demonstratively unfit parent. That wasn't mentioned here, was it?