When dealing with divorce, parents are normally able to set aside their differences for the benefit of their children. Many times, the only real arguments about the children center around each parent wanting more time with the children. But what about those parents who don’t show interest in their children and simply fail to be involved in their children’s lives? Can anything be done ? Surprisingly, the answer is sometimes.

Up until the late 1990s, single parents could terminate parental rights of a parent who willingly failed to pay child support or failed to maintain a relationship with their child. The Oklahoma Legislature, however, passed an emergency order changing the statute to make such terminations available only in adoptions. As a result, a parent wishing to no longer have to deal with an uninvolved or non-paying parent cannot terminate that parents rights except in an adoption. Additionally, the parent who doesn’t want involvement and who is willing to give up rights to a child remains liable for child support even if he/she voluntarily relinquishes rights to the child. Very little incentive remains for voluntarily giving up rights to the child if the parent remains responsible for child support. So when can a deadbeat parent’s rights be extinguished?

According to Okla.Stat tit. 10, 7505-4.2, a person who is adopting a child, whether it is someone unrelated, someone related to the child (such as a grandparent, aunt, or uncle), or a step-parent, can do so without the consent of the natural parent in several situations. First, if a parent willfully failed, refused, or neglected to support a minor either after a court order or according to a parent’s financial ability (if there was no court ordered support), consent to the adoption is not necessary. Second, any parent who fails to establish or maintain a “substantial and positive relationship” with a child does not have to consent to the adoption, and the court can approve the adoption without such consent. In each of these two situations, the court will examine the parent’s failure to pay and failure to maintain the relationship by looking back over the fourteen months prior to filing the petition for adoption. If the court determines a willful failure of either in twelve of those fourteen months, consent to the adoption is not necessary, and the adoptive parents proceed to the next hearing to prove it is in the child’s best interest for the adoption to be approved.

Many step-parents and grandparents have taken advantage of these procedures to adopt the children they have become responsible for when a biological parent shows no responsibility for their children. Typically, the adoptive parents have already been providing support, both financial and emotional, for a time before deciding to make it a permanent relationship. So for those children who have a parent failing to take responsibility for them, there is a way for the people who voluntarily become responsible to make it a permanent situation—by adoption.

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