Stepparent adoption

i live in tampa , fl and have a six year old daughter whose father abandoned us five years ago. when she was two, i got married to another man and this is the only father she has ever known. she now wants to be legally adopted by him so she can have his name too. i have looked all over for the biological father with no luck. we were never married and his name is not on the birth certificate, but she carries his last name. what can i do to help make my daughter's dream come true?

Very simple:

1. Hire a family law attorney to attempt to locate him and serve him with papers to terminate his parental rights.

2. After a certain period of time, and notification being published, court will usually allow an ex parte order.

3. When order is complete, have family law attorney take you through step parent adoption.

[url]http://www.attorneypages.com[/url] or your State bar association.


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I am a law school graduate. What I offer is mere information, not to be construed as forming an attorney client relationship.

respectfully, if i could afford to go through all that, i'd have already done it, isn't there any way to circumvent the lawyer. nothing against lawyers, but most of the population can't afford to pay a lawyer. please somebody help.

[LegalBeagle]

Originally posted by sleeplessgrl
respectfully, if i could afford to go through all that, i'd have already done it, isn't there any way to circumvent the lawyer. nothing against lawyers, but most of the population can't afford to pay a lawyer. please somebody help.

The chances of you being able to force an adoption on your own without an attorney is practically nil. You need to follow very strict guidelines for notification and petitioning for a judge to effectively terminate a fathers rights.

If you 'shop' around you could probably find attorneys who can do all this for under a 1000 dollars. I know this is still a lot of money for some, but it will be worth every penny when it is completed.