State won't domesticate adoption

What is the name of your state? FL


We adopted two children in Oregon but Florida won't domesticate our adoption, so I have not been able to get support enforcement services from CSE. Is this an equal protection issue or not? Who is unprotected? Just me? Me and the kids?

I'm confused. Your children were legally adopted in Oregon? Then don't you have birth birth certificates for the children showing the two of you as the parents? When we adopted, there was a court order and new birth certificates from her birth country.

Additionally, we "re-adopted" in a county court and also have state issued birth certificates.

Has a child support order been issued in Oregon?

[Adoptive parents ARE "real" parents. Sharing genes is not what makes you a "parent"! ]


In our case, it isn't the genes they're worried about, it's the chromosomes. We're both XX. It's legal for two moms to adopt in Oregon, and in most places, for that matter, but not in Florida, so the state can't/won't domesticate the adoption, which is otherwise fully legal. The standard Title IV-E adoption assistance payments have been going to the ex ever since the split, even though we share custody. The State of Oregon never had a situation where there was any dispute over the disbursement of the TItle IV-E funds, so they have no administrative way to address this unless BOTH adoptive parents send a letter requesting that the disbursement be split. The other parent will not do that. This created precedent such that the state changed its administrative rules for these things, but they will not apply them retroactively.

So for the first two years I kept buying clothes, school supplies, Busch Gardens passes, whatever else a normal responsible parent provides their children, while the parent receiving the money bought granite countertops, new furniture, paved a driveway, etc. Aside from using their support for her own enrichment, she's a good parent. But who knew she'd turn out to be a thief and I'd have no remedy aside from civil litigation?

If your adoption was legal, weren't you entitled, in OREGON to obtain an adoptive birth certificate naming both legal parents? AS you are living apart, is there a legal custody order?

Yes, there is such an order. But the State of Oregon does not view this as sufficient to change the payee on the adoption subsidy. Or at least, it didn't used to. It does, now, but they won't apply the new rule--which was created pursuant to our hassles--retroactively to our case. So I've got a situation with a person who has misappropriated the kids' money and the State knows that, and they won't make any changes in the payee unless she agrees to it, or I get a court to order it.

So I got an arbitration award and court order to that effect but she filed for bankruptcy so the custody/support case was stayed, and I can't even send Oregon the state court order that says so, because I will be in violation of the automatic stay, which essentially makes deadbeats bullet proof. I had to get a court order to have her pay into their college accounts and their Sunday school tuition out of that subsidy, so at least that took effect before she filed Ch. 13, but other than that, my kids aren't getting any benefit from it that I can see.

And I just figure that if I was a dad, the state would domesticate and CSE would enforce the appropriate distribution of the Title IV-E funds, which are totally under their jurisdiction.