Here Is How Adoption Affects Child Support
Video Transcribed: If I adopt my wife’s child, will we still get child support in Oklahoma? I’m James Wirth, a lawyer in Oklahoma and that’s the question that we have. Is the consequences of adoption as it relates to child support.
It’s a fairly simple question by Oklahoma law, and that is when an adoption is finalized, that does terminate a child support obligation. So if you do a stepparent adoption, adopt your wife’s kids, adopt your husband’s kids, whatever the circumstances could be, and they’re receiving child support. Once that adoption decree is entered, child support automatically terminates. They don’t have to pay child support anymore.
However, there are circumstances of failed adoptions. There are multiple steps to adoption. And if we’re talking about a stepparent adoption particularly, was that done by agreement? Did the other party sign off on that? Was there a termination of that parent’s rights? Was there relinquishment of rights? The termination of parental rights and the relinquishment of parental rights, that does not stop the child support obligation. However, that can be a step in the process of getting to an adoption decree.
Only once you get to the final decree, not when you get the termination or the relinquishment, but only once you get the final decree of adoption, that is the moment that child support terminates, not earlier in the process. And sometimes we have failed adoptions where some parts get done. Maybe we have a relinquishment. The parental rights are terminated. But once it comes to the actual adoption, the decree is not granted. Under those circumstances, child support continues even though parental rights are lost. The adoption didn’t go forward though, the decree was not entered, so that’s the thing that stops child support.
If you’ve got a question about that or Oklahoma adoption in general, you’re going to want to talk to an adoption attorney in Tulsa privately and confidentially about that. To get that scheduled with a lawyer at my office, go online to makelaweasy.com.
