A step parent adoption may protect your child.  If you die, you want may want to keep your child with your spouse instead of your child’s natural parent.

A step parent adoption normally requires the consent of the natural parent.  Sometimes a parent will consent to avoid paying child support.  In other cases, consent might not be required if the natural parent hasn’t paid court ordered child support or hasn’t seen your child in two years. Also, a parent’s rights may be terminated without consent in these circumstances:

• The father abandoned or neglected the child after having knowledge of the child’s birth;
• the father is unfit as a parent or incapable of giving consent;
• the father has made no reasonable efforts to support or communicate with the child after having knowledge of the child’s birth;
• the father, after having knowledge of the pregnancy, failed without reasonable cause to provide support for the mother during the six months prior to the child’s birth;
• the father abandoned the mother after having knowledge of the pregnancy;
• the birth of the child was the result of rape of the mother; or
• the father has failed or refused to assume the duties of a parent for two consecutive years next preceding the filing of the petition.

Although these statutes refer to the “father,” the same rules would apply if your children are being adopted by their step mother.  Your laws may differ in your state, and their application depends on your unique circumstances.  If you have any questions about step parent adoptions, please contact me using the resource box to the right.

Nebraska remains the only state to allow parents legally to abandon teens at hospitals.  The number of abandoned children has almost tripled to about a three a week as Nebraska legislators rush to change the law.

All states permit parents to leave newborns at safe places.  These “safe haven” or “Baby Moses” laws prevent parents from abandoning their babies in dumpsters or doorsteps.

When Nebraska passed its safe haven law last July, legislators could not agree on an age limit for abandoned children.  So they passed a law that applied to “children” of any age.

Since then, more than half of the 31 children legally abandoned have been teenagers.  On Thursday, authorities searched for a 14 year old boy and a 17 year old girl who ran from an Omaha hospital where they had been abandoned by their mother.

A deeper question would address the social and economic pressures that lead parents to abandon their children in the first place.

Kansas permits babies legally to be relinquished up to 45 days after birth.  Missouri allows safe haven up to one year.  Restrictions apply, including who may abandon, where the children may be left, and other conditions.

I just returned from a trial for termination of parental rights.  The child is a one year old girl.  Her father has been absent most of her life.  Her mother is recovering from addiction to drugs.

My client is the child’s maternal grandmother.  We hope that the state will allow the grandmother to adopt her grandchild.  To help that happen, the mother voluntarily relinquished her parental rights.

Nothing can be as emotional as a mother relinquishing her parental rights to her child.  Whatever mistakes she previously made, today the mother was brave and selfless in placing the needs of her child ahead of her own.  When she returned from presenting her relinquishment, she fell crying into the arms of her child’s grandmother.

Last night I served as the guest speaker at Advice and Aid Pregnancy Center in Johnson County, Kansas. Advice and Aid provides practical, nonjudgmental support for young women facing an unplanned pregnancy.

For more than ten years I have assisted clients in their “Bridges” program, which serves single mothers of infants and young children. These brave women face a host of legal problems involving themselves and their children. Issues range over custody, paternity, child support, step parent adoption, and restraining orders relating to domestic violence.

Advice and Aid operate centers in Shawnee and Olathe, Kansas. They answer a 24 hour crisis hot line at (913) 962-2112.