My daughter wants her step dad to adopt her. Advice please.

[sandym3g]

My 14 year old daughter told the school a couple of months ago of being inappropiatly touched by her birth dad. The child protection told us about a month ago. He had been touching her everytime she stayed over his place for 2 years. It is now going through the process of him being interviewed etc etc.

She turned around to step dad and asked if he could adopt her. Now considering the circumstances would she be able to be adopted without birth fathers consent?

Unlikely for several reasons:

1. Her age

1. Adoption completely breaks the link between child and biological parent in most circs

1. He bio dad would have to be approached and assuming that he didn't consent, the court would have to make her free for adoption. By the time that all went through she'd be pushing 16.

I suggest that you look into your parter obtaining parental responsibility, not that it is going to make a blind bit of difference to what she says has happened with her dad, but because it has practical advantages, eg he could consent to emergency medical treatment.

Presumably you've suspended contact and will apply to revoke any contact order if the police prosecute him

Basically we don't want anything to do with him now. Contact was always arranged between us. I think the feelings mutual as he has blocked us from facebook now.(we were going to once the police got in touch with him anyway).

Number 2 would be totally ok for us. I guess the courts don't see it the same way??

The thing with PR we would have to contact him for permission anyway right?

That's right, the court is loathe to cut off half of a child's heritage, but more importantly, she's of an age where adoption would just be irrelevant tbh.

You could make an application to the court for your current partner to be granted PR assuming that her father wouldn't agree.