tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-574300303008890516.post1882200561987501079..comments2024-03-27T20:48:39.389-04:00Comments on [Birth Mother] First Mother Forum: What's wrong with stepfather adoption? Lorraine Duskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18285341379272250245noreply@blogger.comBlogger13125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-574300303008890516.post-53884857343138612942014-09-19T21:28:12.044-04:002014-09-19T21:28:12.044-04:00She can still adopt him! Most states allow adult a...She can still adopt him! Most states allow adult adoption!not too latehttp://www.fun.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-574300303008890516.post-4202487793726845752014-06-23T13:57:50.188-04:002014-06-23T13:57:50.188-04:00I would like to adopt my stepdaughter but not beca...I would like to adopt my stepdaughter but not because I need a piece of paper showing ownership. Her mother is mentally ill and if anything were to happen to my husband I would have a custody battle on my hands. Interestingly enough, not with her mother but with my MIL who has been fighting us. If it came to a legal battle between my MIL and her biological mother, my MIL would win and she's Satan incarnate. My state allows for children of stepparent adoptions to not have their OBC changed.anon for thisnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-574300303008890516.post-59408096668428807152014-06-15T19:01:02.994-04:002014-06-15T19:01:02.994-04:00That is not always the case, though. My first husb...That is not always the case, though. My first husband and I were in the process of working on a stepparent adoption for my daughter, who is now an adult, when her birth father finally responded to one of the contact attempts is been making for the five years of her life. BF said he didn't want to pay child support, but no adoption. He wanted to meet his daughter. So he met her, spent just enough time with her for her to bond with him, then moved out of state. Over the next 10 years, he invited her out to visit once every year or two - just enough to keep her on his "string". Never recognized birthdays or Christmas. When my first husband and I divorced when she was 8, the Court of course said that she was all mine, but my ex loved her as his own (he was at the hospital when she was born, in fact), so we set up our own visitation schedule to maintain that bond. When my daughter hit her mid-teens, she refused to have anything further to do with BF - her own decision, we always encouraged her to spend time with him, etc., but by then she felt that he wasn't really interested in having a parental relationship with her. While she has been allowed to make her own decisions about it and maintains contact with those she feels a family bond with, she now wishes that we had pushed harder to try and get the adoption through so that her dad would be, legally speaking, her dad. She doesn't like that she can't list him as next of kin at work, or that if he's in the hospital (he had a lot of medical issues), she's not technically considered "family" even though he considers her the closest family he has (he has no other children and is currently unmarried) along with his brother and sister. I think a lot of people think that once you're an adult, whether that stepparent adoption happened or not doesn't matter because the relationship is there, but if that were true, then no one would be fighting for gay marriage. Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-574300303008890516.post-70770304207426327762014-06-15T18:05:15.023-04:002014-06-15T18:05:15.023-04:00I agree exs are in such a hurry to eliminate the o...I agree exs are in such a hurry to eliminate the other parent. Would they like that no way but most mom's are dealing with THEIR issues.<br />My step thing never adopted any of my 5 sibs. He was to busy making us live through hell and at 89 he is still at it. In between boughts of senility and when he needs our help. He is taking money out of joint acct with mom secretly. He does not wantus to have anything, been a molester, abuser, made decision to have my son adopted. PLEASE die, and let us have some piece you f@$&erAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-574300303008890516.post-17075305992046378582014-06-15T08:51:53.863-04:002014-06-15T08:51:53.863-04:00Anonymous at 12:42.:
We have a similar situation i...Anonymous at 12:42.:<br />We have a similar situation in our family. My brother in law adopted his step-son and at least part of the thinking is it would protect the child if something happened to my sister in law. The father was and is not in the picture at all. They have 2 other children. If something happened to her, my sister in law wanted to make sure her son would remain with his siblings and the only father he knows. But the post is very interesting and something I honestly had not thought a lot about.Michellenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-574300303008890516.post-69200695547176758132014-06-15T00:42:39.355-04:002014-06-15T00:42:39.355-04:00I'm an adult adoptee and my husband adopted my...I'm an adult adoptee and my husband adopted my oldest son. I really struggled with the decision of step-parent adoption because of my own issues with adoption. In the end I came to the conclusion that my child shouldn't suffer because of my issues so I allowed the adoption. The biggest reason I wanted my husband to adopt my son was to protect my son in case something were to happen to me before he turned 18. His biological father loves him but a combination of mental illness, criminal activity, and lifestyle choices made being with him and unsafe situation for my son. All of these factors were reflected in our custody agreement but in the case of my death he would have sole custody unless my son were to actually be harmed after that. Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-574300303008890516.post-4236694077224217382014-06-14T23:27:11.524-04:002014-06-14T23:27:11.524-04:00I guess I am one of the few who truly does not wis...I guess I am one of the few who truly does not wish to have their "Father" seek them out. He tripped in and out of our lives for so many early years, always leaving a fresh mark of grief and heartache behind. Broken promises, calls never made, support payments "in the mail" but somehow lost along the way. His refusal to allow my 'StepDad' to legally adopt me (and my sister) was sustained only by cruelty. Only when his new wife demanded he break ties completely and free himself from what tiny bit of financial connection he sporadically maintained to us, did he agree to the adoption. His decisions were always fueled by greed and money.<br /><br />In our case StepParent adoption was a blessing, especially because our 'StepDad' had a child by a previous marriage who lived with us. Legally we became what we already were: his children.<br /><br />Granted I had limited access to my "father" so perhaps that has aided in diminishing my desire to trace that branch of the family tree; I shudder a bit when I see others making sweeping statements encouraging all fathers to seek out their tossed aside offspring with the expectation of open arms.<br /><br />No thanks!<br /><br />Beth 2<br />Beth #2noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-574300303008890516.post-47972543206287002342014-06-14T22:25:38.068-04:002014-06-14T22:25:38.068-04:00Dorkzilla: I had a similar situation in my own fa...Dorkzilla: I had a similar situation in my own family. My brother was never formally adopted by my father, but he totally filled the role of Dad to my brothers, one of whom was not his legal son, and me. When my brother was able to do so without his biological father's permission (who refused to let him change his name at 18 when he joined the Navy), he legally changed his name so that is it the same as the one he used growing up--and is the same as mine. But his birth certificate continues to be a real record of his birth. <br />Lorraine Duskyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18285341379272250245noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-574300303008890516.post-51341280736881694982014-06-14T13:39:29.070-04:002014-06-14T13:39:29.070-04:00Sorry, but part of why step fathers adopt their ne...Sorry, but part of why step fathers adopt their new wive's kids is partly the mother's fault. So many women, pissed off at their child's father push them to do so for revenge, or to flaunt in their face someone else is better than you. Women also do this because in a new relationship the guy adopting her kids is romantic-a romantic faucet of the relationship to her. Maybe a lot of women should start thinking about their children more than themselves and ask them what THEY want first.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-574300303008890516.post-91054827144350513612014-06-14T12:16:57.662-04:002014-06-14T12:16:57.662-04:00My daughter's father is stepfather-adopted. H...My daughter's father is stepfather-adopted. His father was apparently mentally ill and abusive. But I don't see how the adoption solved that problem. If it weren't for the genealogical DNA services out there now, my daughter would have a hard time tracing her ancestry. (He was born in the Finger Lakes region and his adoption may have occurred there too since both his mom and stepfather are from NY. If not, the adoption occurred in SC. Both states are closed-records.)<br /><br />It's all very well and good to say that a better man stepped up but for anyone thinking that, I'd just like to point out that adopting your partner's child doesn't cure what the ex did. This guy still has flashbacks of what his father did to him. He won't even refer to him as a father--calls him "sperm donor" instead. The "sperm donor" passed away close to a decade ago according to Social Security records, so it's not like my daughter has to worry about him now. Adoption took care of none of that--it would have all happened in the fullness of time anyway.Dana Seilhanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11749354913843954242noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-574300303008890516.post-32753472942514056612014-06-14T10:46:16.299-04:002014-06-14T10:46:16.299-04:00This is a seldom covered aspect of adoption most d...This is a seldom covered aspect of adoption most do not think about. And is often met with the most positive thoughts and outlook. I was raised by my stepdad. He's my dad. He's family. When he first married my mother, it had been discussed with me and my brother about him adopting us. We had contact with our father, though sporadic, and had a continued solid relationship with our father's side of the family. We were also only 7 yrs old and 5 yrs old and the burden of the request was on us. "Would you want Ed to be your legal dad?" Our first thought was how this would hurt our father's feelings and that side of the family. We didn't want it. Our father was in and out of our lives through our entire childhood, mostly due to his utter lack of desire to be a parent. The man my mother married filled those shoes willingly. He saw his own childhood in us. He was also a child of divorce with a father who only was a father when convenient and stepfather who filled those shoes, but was unkind to him. He did not want to be either one of those men. He was our Dad in every sense of the word, just never legally.<br /><br />I'm truly on the fence with step parent adoptions because I've seen the ones that were done for the wrong reasons. Caveman efforts to mark the territory and keep the interloper away. Vindictive actions by scorned women to cut the fathers out. I'm not sure of my mother's intentions in those moments almost 30 yrs ago. They hadn't been married long. Perhaps her reasons then were vindictive or perhaps my "Dad" wanted to spare my brother and I the heartache that he went through. We may have been too young to have the burden of the request on our shoulders, but I am glad they did.<br /><br />I had no issue having a different last name than my mother. I had no issue seeing her husband as my dad, even if there was no legal paper making him such. He was the man who walked me down the aisle at my wedding and he is THE Grandpa to my daughter. We have a Dad/daughter relationship that didn't need a legal seal of approval or the legal severing of my relationship to my father and his side of the family, which I am still close with. <br /><br />So I guess the point here is that step parent adoptions are not always necessary, no matter how good of a reason you think you have. Our case may have been one of those cases where dad adopting us would have been a good thing, but in the grand scheme of it all, would it have been necessary? He's our Dad. Nothing changes that. But we also have our father still. Dorkzilla78https://www.blogger.com/profile/12192590110842086581noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-574300303008890516.post-80972512360235727482014-06-14T10:24:12.712-04:002014-06-14T10:24:12.712-04:00There's pressure on the mother to do this, bey...There's pressure on the mother to do this, beyond just her new husband. When I married my first husband I already had a child from a former relationship. I went on to have two more sons with my husband. When my oldest was about to start kindergarten many people told me it would be hard on him having a different last name than the rest of his family. I could see that point. He didn't have his father's last name anyway, he had my maiden name. Still, as an adoptee myself, I didn't want to do that to him. We wound up having his last name legally changed, but my husband never adopted him.Bethhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13035065548934640559noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-574300303008890516.post-7575378701665737622014-06-14T07:18:00.624-04:002014-06-14T07:18:00.624-04:00Great post. Every word written here is true. Fathe...Great post. Every word written here is true. Fathers.....DO seek out your children if you allowed stepfather adoption to happen. If you are thinking of allowing the stepfather to adopt your child, please think twice.<br /><br />This is another situation where I can state a personal example, involving a cousin of mine. But there is so much more to his story that it is not appropriate to post here. The fact that his stepfather adopted him (and later divorced his mother) caused serious problems in his life. He also has the legal problem of his OBC being sealed, and an ABC issued when the stepfather adopted him. But there is much more to the story, which I will post another time.<br /><br />Again, great , thought provoking post.Julia Emilynoreply@blogger.com