Stepparent Adoption in Kansas

Our main adoption page walks through consent, the two-year failure-to-assume-duties standard, and how a stepparent hearing runs. This page picks up where that one leaves off, for the situations that do not fit neatly into a simple signature or a simple fight: a parent who has died, a parent who was never legally established in the first place, and what a decree does and does not undo once it is entered.

Start by naming your situation

Almost every stepparent adoption we see in Johnson County falls into one of four situations, and the situation decides what you actually have to prove.

The first two are covered in depth on our main adoption page, so we will not repeat that ground here. The second two come up more often than families expect, and they work differently enough that they deserve their own explanation. Because a completed adoption is not something a later court date can revisit the way a custody order can, it is worth being sure which situation you are actually in before you file, not after.

• The other legal parent is alive and willing to sign a written consent.
• The other legal parent is alive, will not sign, and the case turns on the clear and convincing evidence standard under K.S.A. 59-2136(h).
• The other legal parent has died.
• There is no second legal parent under Kansas law to begin with, because the child's parents were never married and no one meets the legal definition of a father.

When the other parent has already died

K.S.A. 59-2129(a), which subsection (c) of that same statute extends to stepparent adoptions, requires consent from the living parents of the child, or from one parent if the court finds the other's consent unnecessary. Notice what that sentence does not say. It does not say a deceased parent's estate, or their next of kin, has to be brought into the case.

If your child's other legal parent has died, there is no living parent left whose consent the statute requires, and there is nothing to terminate under K.S.A. 59-2136, since that statute exists to take rights away from a parent who is still alive and unwilling. In practice this means the case does not turn into the two-year, clear and convincing showing a contested adoption requires. Expect the court to ask for proof of the death, such as a certified death certificate, rather than a record of missed birthdays and unpaid support. It is also, of the four situations above, the one where there is no one to persuade and nothing to contest, only a family's existing reality being made official.

When there was never a second legal parent to begin with

Not every child born to unmarried parents has a second legal parent in the eyes of Kansas law, even if everyone knows who the biological father is. Being the biological father does not, by itself, make someone a legal father whose consent an adoption has to address.

K.S.A. 23-2208 sets out when a man is presumed to be a child's legal father: he married or attempted to marry the mother around the time of the birth, he acknowledged paternity in writing, he is named on the birth certificate with his own consent, he is obligated to support the child under a written promise or a court order, or genetic testing shows a 97 percent or greater probability that he is the father. If none of those apply, there may be no legal father in the case at all, and the adoption is not asking anyone to give up rights they never held.

Keep the two questions separate. A man who once acknowledged the child but disappeared years ago is a presumed father under K.S.A. 23-2208, and his consent is addressed the same way any absent parent's consent is, through the failure-to-assume-duties standard our adoption page covers. A man who never did any of those things may not be a legal father at all. Before the decree, the court still has to confirm which situation you are actually in.