you guys are all pathetic and mean, I am sure that if you had to break any bad new to your children you scream it at them and tell them as harshly as you as you can.
First, I wouldn't keep something like this from my child. My child is barely a year and a half old, and we talk in blunt terms around her about how she came to be. Mommy and Daddy didn't have vaginal sex and she came along 9 months later. Mommy's internal parts don't work right. She's going to grow up with talk about this not being wrong or shameful. What you've done is make step-parenting into something shameful.
Now if I had a secret like this to tell my child, I'd tell her gently, "I kept a secret from you because I thought you would be hurt. I think you should know the truth now. There are biological daddies and step-daddies, and both daddies can be real daddies. (Leave the legal term, "father", out of it. They're daddies for this talk.) Biological daddies make the babies with the mommies. (You can tell her that's a conversation for the next day.) But sometimes biological daddies aren't ready to be daddies, so don't stay around. (Don't badmouth the man. You and he created her, and you don't want her thinking her father is bad, so she much be bad too.) Sometimes, when a mommy isn't in a relationship with the daddy, she'll marry another man, who will be another daddy. Well, you have two daddies, a biological daddy you haven't met, and a second daddy."
Be prepared to answer any questions she has HONESTLY.
Really, if her father comes back into the picture and wants visitation, it may hurt your case severely when the judge finds out the child doesn't even know about her father's existence.
I am not talking out of my ass. If a parent neglects to take care of or is mentally unstable enough to care for a medically fragile child the courts will intervene on the child's right to not be murdered or harms from their parents total disregard. just because you don't like anything else that I have to say, I cant help that you want to bash me because YOU didn't understand what I was getting at.
Not a single one of us here wants to see a child suffer. That's why there's so much vitriol toward you. You've lied to your daughter, and want support for continuing to do so. We're concerned about what's going to happen when she finds out. If it's due to an emergency, she's going to be hit at least twice, first by something happening to you, then by learning you told a major lie her entire life. If you die, the courts won't default custody to your husband. Your daughter will likely find herself, while mourning for a mother she's confused about telling her a lie, uprooted from her family and friends and whisked away to a stranger she only found existed.
If her father isn't capable of meeting her medical needs, a judge will assign a social worker to help him get the help he needs. If he still can't care for his daughter, then alternate arrangements will happen.
The father has rights. A child has rights to appropriate care. Biological parents have the right FIRST to meet the child's rights. It's really not a matter of who can do it best. If it were, then most children would find themselves the center of custody battles as legal strangers try to argue they could do it better than the parents.