Has Anyone Been Through This - Voluntary Termination of Parental Rights

[Devi05]

We have gone thru the EXCACT samething!
It got so bad that he felt that sadly he had no other option but to sign off his perantal rights. After he did that his ex said that her current boyfriend was going to adopt the girls, since he had a problem with pay for them and he didn't have to pay child support again.
My DH would go above and beyond what the courts order for visitations and child support. She didn't work and when utilites needed to be paid he paid them. She would ask for extra money and when he couldn't give it, she would not let him see the girls.
So after three years, he gave in signed it, it got signed by the court. So he didn't have rights as a father anymore. His ex and the girls disappered. Months later he got a call from Child Support telling him his liescne was going to be suspended for non payment. Turns out that she didn't marry her then boyfriend, so he didn't adopt the girls. So not only did he not have the right to see the girls, but he still had to pay child support and medical bills.
Fast Forward the four years, without seeing the girls. His ex pops in at his work and in front of the girls says " You need to explain to them why YOU choose not to see them".
Anyway, it's all a big mess and we've been doing the court thing for months and years. Our next court date is in March, and it will be interesting to see how it goes down.
Oh, and she only popped back into our lives when she found out that DH and I had kids together.
I would NOT let him sign his right away, it unleashes more hell in the future.
But cause the the kids it looks like he abandoned them, and the proof is in the paper.

[this_mel_rocks]

Few things...

-You can contact your local bar association about legal aide for representation. Also www.nwjustice.org has a program called CLEAR that helps with legal assistance too

- apparently in WA state you cannot terminate your parental rights unless there is someone willing to take over, and that person has to be the spouse of the other parent

-I think you should re-petition the court for a lower child support amount based on their families financial situation and go for custody.

- also did they take your other child was taken into consideration when child support was ordered? in WA they have to take into consideration all of the children a parent supports.

- www.deltabravo.net has a TON of awesome information about custody issues

[momma6_2angels]

My brother is considering this right now himself. His ex took their boys out to CA with her affair partner and has had two of the guys kids as well. My brither is oaying out the wazoo for child support yet his ex won't let him talk to his boys or even send them letters or gifts. He cannot afford an attorney either.

Laws need changed now. There ARE moms out there who are unfit to raise a child (my xsil for one). Parental Alienation is very serious and can cause alot of mental health issues in the children. I'm fully expecting all of my nephews to end up in serious therapy because of my psycho xsil!

((HUGS)) I know this cannot be easy to deal with!

[momma6_2angels]

Double post!

[tinab]

My friend Keith signed away his rights to his DD. Her mom was putting the baby (she was 3 when he terminated rights) through so much. He got her one time according to the agreement (she didn't even bother to let him know she had the baby until she was 4 months old). The child support was killing him and he wasn't even getting to see the kid. He took on a second job to be able to afford to live in his apartment and she took him back to court for more money! It was then that he brought up termination. He has no rights to her and all child support ended. He just couldn't take not seeing her and sometimes being able to talk to her about seeing her... only to have her mom decide not to let it happen. Poor little kid was always being put through that. He did it for her to not have to deal with her psycho mom doing that. He loves kids and after this, he just can't even think about having kids because he is hurting so much.

What a horrible thing to have to even have to consider! Send him hugs from us. I hope you all can find another way.

[camdensmommy]

I can not tell all of you how much I appreciate your posts. I was crying reading most of them. I was so worried I was going to get flamed for the things which were said and I'm so glad that my original intent seemed to make it across to you. Thank you so much for your heart felt posts and your stories. I too, think that giving up rights is a bad idea.

My husband is just becoming so detached from the situation. He is stressed and he's letting it get to him. Not to mention he didn't get to see DSD for the first 18 months of her life so they never formed a very good attachment. Our relationship with her was fantastic until about age 4 when her mom found it a wise idea to use my DSD as a "confidant" and start spewing untruths to her. BTW, I have known my DSD since she was 20 months and she usually calls me mom. She loves me and I love her. But the relationship has become so strained. When she is here you can tell she feels like she is betraying her mom. And I never know how much to say to her because I don't want to cross the line and say anything negative about her mom. When I do say things they are in generalities like "You know Mikayla, sometimes people do some silly things that are hard to understand. Sometimes people will try to make you believe things about people and it is hard because sometimes you like those people but it feels like you're not supposed to like them because you don't want to hurt the other person's feelings. Sometimes grownups just feel icky inside and they don't choose good ways to deal with their feelings. It's important for me to let you know that it's not your job to take care of the adults in your life. Adults need to take care of themselves and it's your job to be a little girl. I want you to know you can always talk to me, ok?" Something like that. It was a good 5 minute speech and she just burst into uncontrollable tears afterwards so I could tell I hit the mark. I just let her cry until she was done and told her that daddy and I loved her. What else can you do? Nothing, really.

As far as the Child Support, you can't really argue the numbers. Really, in all honesty, it's accurate. My husband makes $20.74/hr as an electrician apprentice (he is in a 5 year program). He is the sole income earner and I sometimes babysit to earn more money when we need it. To top off all the financial stress I just lost a babysitting job because the family wants to claim it as a tax deduction and I can't afford to do that so they dropped me. So now I am looking for something else but I am also pregnant. Basically we purchased our house before we never knew about an increase in CS. The payment was at the top of our affordability and we didn't worry too much because DH's wages are set and we know the years that he is going to get a raise because it's union. We knew he was set to get a raise this summer so we figured we just had to find a way to afford it until then. We bought the house for $155K (housing is super expensive in WA, but affordable on the east side of the state). What we didn't think about (our fault) was that Child Support could go up. It just didn't cross our minds and so we really killed ourselves with that one. Really, it's our fault for not being responsible and taking a more affordable payment. It's not like it's an extravagent house, it's not by any means. It's nice but very modest for where we live. But as a one income family (which I know many of you understand - you have to be really careful). So we looked at refinancing and we can, at best, lower our payment by $100. And that is not enough to offset the cost of the increase. Child Support is only $400 (or maybe a bit above that?) so it is not that bad, I don't think. It is only bad if you weren't planning on it and your currrent bills don't allow it.

Luckily we don't have any car payments and we owned all 3 of our cars. The newest was a 1997 Honda and we sold that yesterday for money. We are saving the money so we can pay of the backdated child support when we get the bill or when they tell us the actual amount, we haven't received any of the legal paperwork yet. We'll use the rest of the money for first/last and deposit for wherever we wind up renting rent.

For me the stress of keeping this house is just too much. DH was talking about getting a second job and I don't want him to do that. Not only is he legally not allowed to do that, per his union agreement but even if he decided not to worry about that if his wages go up they're just going to motion for more child support anyway. Plus, I want him to be able to be a part of the family and actually see us. There's no reason someone making as much as he does shouldn't be able to find a way to pay the bills. We just have to change our bills I guess. I've decided our family is more important than a house and we are young (27) so we can always buy a house again later. We have excellent credit and at this point we are trying very hard to protect it so we don't screw ourselves in the long term. As far as selling the house, at best we are going to break even. We are going to attempt a for sale by owner since the Title company draws up all the paperwork anyway. That will help make it so we don't owe anything on the house.

I think someone mentioned this but his wages aren't garnished. We pay the CS voluntarily because DH gets paid weekly and he is union so he changes employers every 1-3 months. It takes the state forever to get caught up with stuff like that and we didn't want child support to get behind because it was their fault for not switching the garnishment to the new employer and have it turn around on DH so we motioned to be able to voluntarily pay it and since we've never been late or missed a payment they agreed. I just send the amount in a check every month (I do the bills).

We are definitely getting a new lawyer for whatever we need to do next. Not because the child support increased but because somehow that lawyer stopped liking my DH and we don't know why. We think he purposely stopped doing things in the end and he stopped returning DH's calls in a timely manner, etc. DH just thought he was good because he was the lawyer that finally got DH visitation rights.

Like someone else mentioned, my DH did not even find out he was a dad until the day after my DSD was born. She sent him a "page" (remember pagers? lol) the day after she was born saying "you're a dad and we're at the hospital". They were both 18. She lied and said she didn't know she was pregnant. DSD was born in the living room by the fire department and then they were rushed to the ER. DSD's mom was very sick after the pregnancy because she lost a lot of blood and because she hadn't had any prenatal care (vitamins, etc) and so she was malnourished (the mom not DSD). She committed purgery in court and even said these things in front of a judge. We now have written proof from family members that she did know she was pregnant but lawyers say it doesn't matter. Basically committing purgery is never punished. A few months after DSD was born her mom stopped letting my DH see her. She made up a lot lies about DH and his family and it broke all of their hearts. Dh's family is the best. I can not imagine a nicer family. It took two lawyers to get the needed visitations and I met my DH shortly after this.

Oh there is so much more than this but I've all ready written a book. I just hope I can keep my DH motivated. DSD and him struggle with their relationship. He will try to reach out and she'll reject him or she'll reach out in a weird way and it annoys him and he rejects her. I mean she's 7, her idea of reaching out is just different. She'll run over to him and push him or something and he'll tell her to stop. I get mad at him when we're alone about this because it's obvious she was trying to find a way to make physical contact but didn't know how to do it. I think she is scared to be close to him because of all the things her mom says. He just feels like DSD hates him. It's hard. I tell him to buck up and be the mature adult but what he went through when she was born really tore him apart. He lost a lot of self confidence at being a parent to her and I think he is still truly scared of her mom.

[camdensmommy]

Originally Posted by mommarocks3 Few things... -You can contact your local bar association about legal aide for representation. Also www.nwjustice.org has a program called CLEAR that helps with legal assistance too

Thank you! I will look into this.

Originally Posted by mommarocks3 - apparently in WA state you cannot terminate your parental rights unless there is someone willing to take over, and that person has to be the spouse of the other parent

Thanks! I was looking all over the net yesterday for the laws in WA about this and I couldn't find it. Her mom is dating someone and they've been together for about a year and a half and she has really tried to push us away since they met. She wants to pretend we don't exist and create a family with this new guy (who seems nice enough, thank goodness) and his 3 daughters.

Originally Posted by mommarocks3 - -I think you should re-petition the court for a lower child support amount based on their families financial situation and go for custody.

We did petition and they only lowered CS by $30. So we literally spent thousands of dollars (that is what took so much extra time is filing this petition) to save $30/month. Totally not worth it. Basically our point was that he is the sole income earner and I don't work because DD has severe food allergies (she has an EPI pen) so I don't work outside the home because we don't trust her care to anyone else. It didn't really matter much.

Originally Posted by mommarocks3 - - also did they take your other child was taken into consideration when child support was ordered? in WA they have to take into consideration all of the children a parent supports.

See above. We are pregnant again and DH thought about bringing that up but it's not worth the thousands of dollars in lawyer fee's to save another $30/month. Plus, we are the ones deciding to have more kids. I dont' want it to seem like since we are having more kids we don't think we should pay CS, KWIM?

-

Originally Posted by mommarocks3 - www.deltabravo.net has a TON of awesome information about custody issues

Thanks for all the good info!

[momma6_2angels]

You know, I wonder. Is there any chance that you and your dh can have your DSD evaluated by a psychiatrist who specializes in children of divorce? Could his family help you guys try and get full custody of DSD. Obviously mom is not good for her and any judge would have to see that! One of dh's buddies here got custody of his daughter because the mom kept trying to play games and the judge got fed up!

Thanks! I was looking all over the net yesterday for the laws in WA about this and I couldn't find it. Her mom is dating someone and they've been together for about a year and a half and she has really tried to push us away since they met. She wants to pretend we don't exist and create a family with this new guy (who seems nice enough, thank goodness) and his 3 daughters.

This is what my xsil did. She married her affair partner days after the divorce hearing. From that moment, AP was their "new daddy". They have to call him Daddy and cannot speak of my brother. I HATE women (and I use this term loosly) like that.

IMO, children should be evaluated by someone periodicly so they don't end up dealing with Parental Alienation.

[camdensmommy]

BTW, I need to clear some stuff up about her mom and the alienation thing.

I think she is doing just enough to protect herself. She is very smart that one (and coniving). Before we went to court this summer to enforce the visitations she yelled at my DH on the phone for 20 minutes telling him that she didn't want Mikayla alone with me while he was at work and that she would refuse to drive anywhere to meet us (DH offered to do ALL the driving - since we are the ones who chose to move). She told him what an awful dad he was and how Mikayla would be better off without him, etc, etc. He cried in my arms for a good hour after that call. It was crazy. I've never seen him so broken. Anyway, my point is that when we went into court she did the craziest thing (we thought we'd see more of the false accusations or something) but she made him look like a complete ***. She told the judge that she had no problem with Mikayla coming to our house, didn't mind driving half way and thought everything he was proposing in the parenting plan was perfectly reasonable and she was disappointed that he chose to drag the situation to court and take up everyones time when this would have been best handled with the (what is that "m" word where they are the middle man and they just help the parents agree? I totally forgot the word). Anyway, the judge was mad at my husband and told him that he needed to stop dragging things into court and that they needed to be mature and work things out amongst themselves. DH was so mad! He didn't want to be spending thousands of dollars on a lawyer in court. She is so freaking coniving.

She has not refused any visits that are in the parenting plan. She certainly makes it as hard as possible by not returning calls until the last minute and finding little ways to make life hard. She just conveniently "forgets" to have Mikayla call us back or she says Mikayla doesn't want to talk to us. Mikayla may not *want* to talk with us because she is trying to please her mom. It's sad. But I'm not going to demand that Mikayla talk to us on the phone. I just don't know what to do.

But yes, if she ever refuses a visit we will definitely report it to the police. I think there is a three strikes rule in Washington and then she could lose custody. I'm pretty sure she's smart enough to not let that happen.

[betty_joanne]

Did they ever do a dna test? Is he 100% sure she is his? Not that it matters as far as their relationship(dh and dd) but legally it would. I assume they did but just wondering.
With another baby on the way please do see if you can qualify for wic. It is not embarassing or anything like that and milk and cheese is sooo expensive these days that it really could help a lot.
Other than that write down all of you bills, credit card balances and do a budget. I have a 1st half bills/2nd half bills page each month which lists all bills and the amounts(bills get payed on the 1st and the 15th). So, it makes life easier because i know what is due and only have to do bills twice a month.
Once you have your baby go back to the courts and have them figure in your new baby. That should lower the child support a little bit.