Also posted in Legal Matters.
My 12yo dss lives me and dh full time and has done since late 2011.
His bio mum lives abroad and has chosen to cut dss out of her life. I met dss when he was 2 and have been main mother figure in his life since then. Bio mum willingly signed Residency to us and PR to me.
There has been no direct contact since April 2013. We took dss to Europe to visit her. They spent a couple of hours together but she brought dss back early stating that 'he wanted his mum'.
We had also taken him to see her in April 2012 and August 2012 but there was a lack of commitment from her end on each visit (i.e. not showing up/showing up extremely, extremely late with poor or no excuses) so we stopped because the waiting around and anxiety was damaging to dss. The court order does not oblige us to take dss for visits- we were just trying to do the right thing. She visited England for 2 days in January 2012. Since then she says that she cannot afford anymore flights but she and her new dh take regular 5* holidays to other locations.
She also refuses to send Christmas or Birthday cards on financial grounds. Nor does she call on special occasions. We originally waived child maintenance as we were just happy to have dss with us officially but the court ordered a payment of €75 a month. This has never been paid so the debt must be approaching €4000.
The last indirect contact was a drunken phone call in November 2013 entailing verbal abuse to a then 9yo dss which traumatised him to the point of missing a day of school due to lack of sleep (We did not take this decision lightly- I am a teacher and dss was a pupil in my school at the time.)
No contact with bio mum's family either. We contacted her sister (dss' godmother) just over a year ago asking for help in trying to build some kind of relationship between dss and his bio mum but she did not want to get involved and said that if bio mum did not want to know dss then there was her choice. No word from her since. In fact, both sisters have blocked our phone numbers.
Dss is very keen on the adoption, as are myself and dh. We have taken several months to discuss it as a family and ensure that dss understands the implications if it goes ahead. I sent bio mum a letter about my intention to adopt via registered mail in November but received no reply. She has moved house twice but I think that the address that I used is correct as we heard that she had moved back to the flat that she used to live in originally and and the letter was signed for. We also emailed her the letter but again, no reply. I also looked her up on Facebook and messaged her but as we are not friends she may not have received it.
Therefore, on the A58 form I will need to state that I do not have bio mum's consent to the adoption and I will need to submit a Statement of Facts as to why I want to go ahead.
My question is what this Statement should focus on: her shortcomings or my positives? I want to be honest but there are so many examples of damaging behaviour on her part that the document came across in quite a nasty way and I'm concerned that that will in turn reflect on me somehow.
I hope that somebody can give me some guidance.
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Statement of Facts - Step Parent Adoption
8 replies
lateforeverything · 05/04/2016 13:43
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