My question involves a child custody case from the State of: California

Hello,

I live in California with my 2 year old son who was born in the UK, I was married to his father at the time who is on his UK birth certificate and whom my child shares his last name with. In our divorce I obtained full custody and permission to move back to California with our son. My son's father became hostile after the divorce and made threats and verbally abused me and swore at me on skype in front of our son, as well as verbally attacked my unborn daughter (by my new partner). Since his displays of aggression and threats I have stopped skype contact and informed the UK courts as the divorce was in its final stages that I no longer wished to keep up skype contact due to the hostility and threats, I received no objection. I will not go into the reasons for our divorce but it was for mine and my son's safety as my ex was into very illegal activities, though I did not disclose those to the courts as I was fearful of repercussions. I did however report his threats to the local police out there and have documented death threats made by my ex against my new partner.

I now live in California with my son and my new partner and our infant daughter. I will be getting married this autumn and as a family unit of 4, three of us will have the same surname while my son will still have my ex's surname, and I would like this changed. My ex does not provide financial support for our son and has no contact with him. My ex lives in the UK and since we last spoke he changed his phones numbers and moved house with no forwarding address. he has my phone number and address here but has not attempted to contact me. I believe he sent one email to my dad asking for photos of our son, I'm not sure if my dad replied or not. My son's birthday is next week and my son just received a birthday card in the mail from my ex and his mother (it is the first contact my ex has attempted to make since feb this year and the first contact his mother has attempted to make since december 2011).

In the email to my father my ex mentioned he has a solicitor in the UK who tried to mail me a letter requesting visitation for our son, I have received no such letter and don't know if this is just a scare tactic. Would a UK solicitor has any jurisdiction on us living in California? My ex gave up his custody and he is a very bad man with links to very bad people, I do not want him back in our lives, I fled the UK to get away.

My questions are this:

Could some sort of visitation order be enforced by UK solicitor on us living in CA? My ex provides no support and has made no attempt to contact us up until now. He does not even live in this country and I have no intention on returning to the UK. I am struggling to make ends meet and cannot afford a lawyer at this time and I'm not sure what to do.

Once my new partner and I are married, would it be possible to obtain a name change without my ex's consent? I do not even know where in the UK he lives at the moment to notify him, though I know he would object if he knew. My son does not even know his surname yet and I don't want him learning it as I don't want him confused incase we can change it. I don't want him to feel different to the rest of the family. He calls my new partner daddy and does not know his biological father who he has not seen in many months. I showed him a picture of his biological father recently to see if he remembered him and he just called him ' man.'

Once my new partner has supported my son and lived as his dad for a few years could we apply for him to adopt my son without his biological father's consent, assuming he still provides no support and still lives in the UK with no contact?


THank you very much in advance for any help you can provide.