My question involves adoption law for the State of: Arkansas
My wife and I divorced 3 years ago and we have 2 children. My son is mine biologically but my daughter is not. I met her when she was 18 months old and I would love nothing more than to adopt her. My daughter is all for this as well as her mother. Act 1 states though that because I am unmarried and living with someone that I am unable to adopt her. One caveat I did notice though in this legislation is that I cannot adopt her if she is to live with us. The thing is, she would still be living with her mother and her brother. I have very liberal visitation rights (basically can go over and see them anytime I want and bring them here as often as I want) so there is no barrier there. I was wondering that since I am not adopting a child that is in foster care or is a ward of the state, how would I go about doing this? Do I need to go thru the Department of Human Services or if not, who would I go through and what would the cost be and what procedure would I need to go thru to make this happen? I am hoping to have this done before Christmas and give this to my daughter as her Christmas present (yes I'm aware that she'll need to sign papers since she's 14 lol but still would make a beautiful Christmas present). Oh ya, and her father has not been in contact or in the picture or made any attempt to contact in the 12.5 years that I've know my daughter. Any help would be appreciated.