Legal Fees For My Daughter
Donation protected
The story is long, but here goes..
My 11 year old daughter, Rose, has not seen or heard from her biological father since a week before she turned 2. Due to unsafe conditions and her being hurt while under his supervision, our judge had suspended his visits while an investigation was going on. That was in 2010. In 2011, we went to court again, and the judge decided that the biological father could have supervised visits with her, and if all went well, he could start having unsupervised. He never initiated any visits with her, moved several times without notifying me, shut down his email, changed his phone number, and I didn't hear from him. So, we went on with life. She went to therapy, got through some things, and we moved on.
Fast forward to 2018, my daughter had spent several years, asking for her stepfather to become her "forever daddy". She knew what adoption was and knew that she wanted her stepfather to take the legal role as "dad", since he had been caring for her since 2012 and she didn't even remember her biological father, who had disappeared 7 years prior.
We hired an attorney, did everything the attorney asked, did a diligent search, and couldn't find the biological father. The Stepparent Adoption was granted by default. We thought everything had been done properly. We had no reason to think otherwise.
Apparently the biological father had been stalking me on my public social media pages (I'm a blogger). On there, he saw something about the adoption. He and his attorney immediately filed to vacate the adoption. We went to the hearing and the judge vacated the adoption, without an actual re-hearing (literally was done in under 2 minutes), because she believed that I MUST have known where the biological father was. She believed that because he had been garnished for child support, I MUST know where he is, and claimed I had committed felony perjury. That was in August of 2018. We have been fighting ever since.
Since then, we have been to court over the threat of felony perjury and have been sued for egregious attorney's fees. He has spent all this time just trying to sue me, but has still yet to contact me to try and see his daughter.
My little girl is Autistic and is suffering through PTSD from all of this chaos. All of this because we filed for adoption, after he abandoned her for 7-8 years.
Now, we've been ordered to pay attorney's fees (that we don't have). He is trying to get my husband and I incarcerated, if we don't pay the fees. We have another case going, where he is demanding visits with her. We are worried that her best interests are not going to be heard, and need a Guardian Ad Litem, which is another cost of it's own. The longer we do this, the more money we have to put out. We are not a wealthy family.. We have just enough to get by. We've maxed out credit cards, taken out loans, and are still desperately trying to figure out how to keep fighting this fight.
If you can help, in any way, please do.
Any small help is still help.
Thank you for reading.
My 11 year old daughter, Rose, has not seen or heard from her biological father since a week before she turned 2. Due to unsafe conditions and her being hurt while under his supervision, our judge had suspended his visits while an investigation was going on. That was in 2010. In 2011, we went to court again, and the judge decided that the biological father could have supervised visits with her, and if all went well, he could start having unsupervised. He never initiated any visits with her, moved several times without notifying me, shut down his email, changed his phone number, and I didn't hear from him. So, we went on with life. She went to therapy, got through some things, and we moved on.
Fast forward to 2018, my daughter had spent several years, asking for her stepfather to become her "forever daddy". She knew what adoption was and knew that she wanted her stepfather to take the legal role as "dad", since he had been caring for her since 2012 and she didn't even remember her biological father, who had disappeared 7 years prior.
We hired an attorney, did everything the attorney asked, did a diligent search, and couldn't find the biological father. The Stepparent Adoption was granted by default. We thought everything had been done properly. We had no reason to think otherwise.
Apparently the biological father had been stalking me on my public social media pages (I'm a blogger). On there, he saw something about the adoption. He and his attorney immediately filed to vacate the adoption. We went to the hearing and the judge vacated the adoption, without an actual re-hearing (literally was done in under 2 minutes), because she believed that I MUST have known where the biological father was. She believed that because he had been garnished for child support, I MUST know where he is, and claimed I had committed felony perjury. That was in August of 2018. We have been fighting ever since.
Since then, we have been to court over the threat of felony perjury and have been sued for egregious attorney's fees. He has spent all this time just trying to sue me, but has still yet to contact me to try and see his daughter.
My little girl is Autistic and is suffering through PTSD from all of this chaos. All of this because we filed for adoption, after he abandoned her for 7-8 years.
Now, we've been ordered to pay attorney's fees (that we don't have). He is trying to get my husband and I incarcerated, if we don't pay the fees. We have another case going, where he is demanding visits with her. We are worried that her best interests are not going to be heard, and need a Guardian Ad Litem, which is another cost of it's own. The longer we do this, the more money we have to put out. We are not a wealthy family.. We have just enough to get by. We've maxed out credit cards, taken out loans, and are still desperately trying to figure out how to keep fighting this fight.
If you can help, in any way, please do.
Any small help is still help.
Thank you for reading.
Organizer
Lee Anne
Organizer
Sanford, FL
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