Legal Guardianship?

[Kestralcottage]

Hi all,

New to MN.

My wonderful step daughter’s (4.5yo) biological mum tragically died when she was born.

I met her dad just under 2 years later and I’ve been living with them for 2.5 years roughly, 1.5 years ago we brought a house together. She calls me mummy etc now as really I’m all she’s known (I am the first partner that her Dad has had since he lost his wife) she of course knows her story and that she has essentially two mummies.

We are also expecting a baby next year and are recently engaged although not planning to get married for a few years

My question is on legal guardianship

Currently it seems our only options are for me to adopt her (which I understand is a long process) or to get married and apply for legal guardianship (seems most straight forward)

Is there any advice on which is the best process to go down and if it makes any difference if the official legal side doesn’t happen for a couple of years? Or anyone who has adopted in this sort of situation and can advise on the process

Im very fortunate that family relationships are all very good both from my partners family and my SD’s biological maternal family (grandparents and uncle) and there are no issues or objections to this formalisation

TIA

Out of interest why do you want this? If it’s in case anything happens to your DP then you could just get him to put in his will that he wants you to care for his DC and that’s legally binding.
Or is it so you can sign forms etc for her and consent to medical treatment?

We went with marriage and parental responsibility through a step parent parental responsibility agreement. It was fairly straightforward, although we had to send documents twice as our local office didn't tell us the right things to include.
The main advantage for us over adoption was me being seen an additional parent, rather than a replacement. (As you can use a step parent responsibility agreement even if both parents are still alive, and there is no replacement birth certificate.) It was a better emotional fit for our family. (Of course, adoption doesn't mean you are replacing your daughter's other mummy, and if you being on your daughters birth certificate is important to her adoption might be a better route.)
The only advantage of doing it now is you have parental responsibility now.

We did adoption, neither of us liked the idea of one of the children having one parent, and any further children having two parents. It wouldn’t have been right for the oldest to only have one person to call Dad, while any younger siblings had two.

Step parent adoption isn’t lengthy, its actually very straight forward (in england anyway), it wasn’t costly either.

If you adopt your step-daughter you will break her legal relationships with her mother's family. She has a right to remain legally related to her maternal grandparents, maternal uncle etc.

So it would be better if you become her legal guardian. That way you are an additional parent and her maternal relations are still legally related to her.