My question involves adoption law for the State of: Florida.
I am the biological father of 3 children in which I no longer get to see. In fact, I actually had to sign over my rights to my children in order to stay out of jail. I have done some research and found that there are basically 2 grounds for overturning a waiver of parental rights and that is for fraud or being under duress. I was granted supervised visits with my 3 children every other saturday for an hour. My attorney told me that it was customary these days when there has been a significant lapse in time since seeing each other. He told me to give him 3 months of supervised supervision and he would file for normal visitation rights. I did the three months, but when the 3 months were up for him to file, the courts set it up on the docket for 2 months later. I was very frutrated because the visits with the children were going so well and I was excited to be able to have normal visits, which should have been granted originally, but due to the fact that I had no representation at the time of the decision, I was at the mercy of the courts. My children were coming up to the visitation center and I could tell that they were struggling because they were having to call their step father "Dad" and they werent sure where that left me. Their mother would send them to visitation with their baseball jerseys on with their step fathers last name on it. Surely, to really upset me also. I was hurt because I felt that it was really abusive toward the children. Even though there had been an injunction (really unjustified) between their mother and I, I felt compelled to contact her by phone to plead with her to not put the children in that position and that those were legally my children also and her and her new husband had no right to changing their names. Well so start summing it up, after contacting her, 3 days later I was charged with contempt of court, violation of an injunction and aggravated stalking after an injunction (because I called 3 times. The first time the answering machine picked up, the second when she answered I couldnt speak when I heard her voice on the other end of the line and the third time that we actually spoke). I was placed in jail on a $25000 bond with felony charges. This was all a strategic play. What it actually boiled down to is that if I sign over my rights as the father of my children, I could escape going to prison. I contacted her attorney and told her that I wasnt gonna sign anything if it didnt stipulate that charges would be dropped for the bogus charges. She advised me that she couldnt and that it would be illegal to stipulate such. I refused to sign because I didnt feel that I could trust the mother to drop the charges. It was a stalemate until I received a call that told me that an arrangement had been made. I was told that if I signed all the paperwork that they sent and had it notorized and 72 hours had lapsed, then I was to take the papers up to the States Attorneys office to drop them off and in return I would receive paperwork as to the Nole Prosse of the charges. Surely this was illegal on many levels. Do I have grounds to appeal the waiver of parental rights? Wasnt there a violation of my constitutional rights for the States Attorneys office facilitating an exchange in which they knew perfectly well that it was illegal and that the act itself was grounds to nullify the contract? Please help! I am the victum of the Good Ole Boy System and I need a hero to help my children and I!

