Relinquishment of Parental Rights law in VA

I think I'd go back and look at the custody agreement for your step-son. If your husband has unsupervised visitation rights then he needs to drag the ex into court and force her to uphold her end of the deal.

But, the text of the law that appears to cover termination of his parental rights/responsibilities can be found here:
http://leg1.state.va.us/cgi-bin/legp504.exe?000+cod+16.1-277.02

For a summary of the law, see Va Dept of Social Services: Adoption

For what it means to you, your life, and those in your life, see a lawyer.


I gotta wonder about the visitation thing the ex-wife/birth mother has goin' on there, though - seems odd to me the birth father would be legally subject to such restrictions as she appears to be imposin' - that's another thing to see a lawyer about. Prolly oughtta do that. Gather up copies of the divorce paers and have 'em looked at by somebody who knows what to look for. It well could be the mother has no right to impose such restrictions, and in fact and by law and decree is prohibited from doing so. Mebbe not, but its sure worth lookin' into.

Thank you both for your info. Perhaps a better look into the situation would better explain. My husband and his "ex" were never married, and the custody/child support agreement was completely done through mediation.....EIGHT TIMES over the past 4 months, as she is not satisfied with the amount of child support. She is Primary parent, husband secondary. He has full visitation, and what they call "fully on demand visitation ability". They live 3 1/2 hours from us, and we have gone up there with our children, and all paperwork from the court house...requested to pick step son up, was denied...not even allowed to see him....went to the police station with the paper work, had an officer go with, and even HE didn't make it happen! His interpretation of the paper work was that she, being the primary parent, had full decision of when it was ok and when it was not for us to have step son with us. We asked for him at Thanksgiving, and were told that he would be in North Carolina with her parents....okay. Requested for Christmas or New Year's, and was told again that he'd be out of state with my in-laws in Indiana. My husbands parents have seen more of him than he ever has, because she goes up there constantly and "invades our home" as my mother-in-law puts it.
The main thing is that my husband is at his ropes end. When discussing the termination of rights, I said to him that I know it wasn't something that he took lightly or wanted to do because it IS his SON, and he loves him....My husband looked me in the eye and said, "How can I love him for WHO he is when I don't even know him? Yes, I love my SON, but who is he?" That made me cry inside for him, because I know he's agonizing about this whole thing....and both of us being active duty Navy, and limited on our off time with our own children as it is, makes it 100 times harder.
Anyways, thank you both for responding and giving me some guidance. It's greatly appreciated!

BabyJeli