My husband's former spouse is always up to something. The latest is a recent request for her husband (very wealthy) to adopt my husbands daughter so that she (daughter) can live off the interest of several trusts on his familys side. This comes only a year after she took my husband to court for more child support, claiming to be living on $20,000 a year. Every year we wait "for the other shoe to drop" it is very stressful.

As my step daughter is almost 16 and lives 4 hours away, we rarely see her. She hasn't been to our house in almost 3 years. My husband tried to get her to come but it becomes a battle with the ex, or in recent years a costly court battle. We are exhausted and financially drained from being in and ut of court. We have a relatively new Visitation Schedule, that cost tens of thousands of dollars to secure, that they refuse to follow, and at 14, 15, 16 it is really hard to "make" her come here. The whole situation is very sad, my husband is so torn if he pushes her to visit, she doesn't call for months, if he just chats and has good phone conversations, he get more and consistent contact.

Now this on top of everything else. They keep calling it a "paper adoption" I didn't realize there was any other kind. So after all that, my question is this, can the step father adopt and take full financial responsibility for my husbands daughter, while leaving his legal rights to her in contact? Would there be anyother reason his ex would be pushing this that we are missing, any questions we should be sure to ask? If in fact he decides to let this go through, it is tearing him apart.

Thanks for you time!

I think what his ex is saying by "paper adoption" is that his daughter isn't visiting now, they would likely not prevent occasional contact (such as what is going on now), however, adoption is adoption. Your husband's parental rights would be terminated. He would no longer be responsible for child support. If they wanted to, if he agrees to the adoption, they could prevent him from ever seeing her again. He could not force them to allow contact unless there is some clause in the agreement that would allow some form of contact.

She's trying to make it sound like less of a blow to his rights as her father by saying it that way. She thinks she's being slick.

He would be removed from his daughter's birth certificate, and his name would be replaced with the step-fathers.