Rule #3 Changing Names

This one is sticky. As I've said before my honey wasn't around for 7 years or so consistently. His ex had told everyone, including my honey's mom that, she put a notice in the paper & changed Cinderella's last name & that her husband had adopted Cinderella. She was being 'nice' by allowing my honey & his folks to still see Cinderella.

This is actually a legal way to go about doing this & kind of forcing an adoption. You have to prove that the father/mother hasn't been in the child's life for over a year & has had no contact, then you can publish in a paper where you *think* the other bio parent might be living & if there's no response then you can change the child's name. 

The other way you can do this is, put NO male name on the birth certificate, receive NO child support, then, once you get married have your honey sign a piece of paper saying, "Yes I realize that even if it comes back 10 years from now that this child is not mine, I'm still taking full responsibility for this child." That's what my ex & I did with my oldest. I had her when I was 19, after I left an abusive relationship. Her bio had NOTHING to do with her & hadn't seen or talked to her in almost 3 years. Her 'adoption' & name change was finalized when she was almost 3. She's has my ex husband & I's last name ever since. 

The only way that we ever found out that Cinderella's mom lied to us about this was when we got notice that we were being sued for 10 years of back child support. Yes. 10. Full. Years. Of . Back. Support. even though we had tried to give her money previously & she denied it saying, "I don't want your money." Luckily we had a good attorney. There was NO back support ordered because she had never tried to get child support in the first place. 

This brings us to our current situation. Cinderella's birth certificate has my honey's last name, yet she's enrolled in school under Cinderella's step dad's name. How exactly is this possible? Does their state not require a birth certificate? Her health insurance is under Cinderella's step dad's name. How is that possible? Sounds like insurance fraud to me. That nets jail time & hefty fines, not to mention having to pay back all the insurance stuffs too! 

If you are going to change your child's name, do it for the right reason. Make sure that you think it completely out. Don't just decide, "Well I'm going to call my child Cinderella Smith, have all of her records done under Cinderella Smith, get insurance for her under that name, and have everyone know her by that last name." It's not going to bode well when bio daddy comes back & says, "HEY! My name is on the birth certificate, I pay you child support, AND I see her all the time!" Think about what you do before you do it. It's not just you, it's your children as well.

I can only imagine the real reason why his ex wanted to change Cinderella's last name is because if she didn't, all of her kids would have different last names b/c they're all from different men. 

I digress.