Quote Quoting sedaiv
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Child's age I decided on would be 12, turning 13 while in care of the adult.
What you have to be careful about is whether anybody from the outside of the situation is going to immediately think of this guy.
Quote Quoting sedaiv
Mother is dead, father is non-existent/absent.
Non-existent... I'm assuming that we're not doing a Biblical allegory here, so I'm going to interpret that as "not on the birth certificate, possible father's identity unknown to the child." If the father is known to the child but has been absent for a long time, it complicates your main character's legal position.
Quote Quoting sedaiv
Main character NEVER contacts police, the National Center of Missing & Exploited Children (I THINK I named it right) or CYP/CYS or any other child services. Reason being, he knows where he screwed up with his children and sees this as an opportunity to redeem himself and his wife is deceased.
I can see lots of opportunity for internal dialog here, as well as drama between the characters. You could add into the mix prior CPS investigations of the child, and even a possible prior foster care placement, as reasons why the child might go along with the plan, or even her suspicions of protective services and foster care based upon the reports of a peer.

It is perfectly legal to leave your child in the care of a responsible adult, although it's something most people only do for a short period of time, or for which they reply upon extended family (or less typically, a close family friend or parent of the peer of the child) for a longer period of placement. So if the man were to say, "Mom entrusted the child to me before she died", and the child were to back that story up, he would be able to seek services for her (e.g., enrolling her in school) as if she were a homeless child. If he were to try to formalize his care into a guardianship, which would be necessary for certain aspects of care such as adding the child to his health insurance, things would become more tricky.
Quote Quoting Dogmatique
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Doing your own research doesn't typically involve asking people to do it for you.
Authors frequently interview experts and turn to outside resources when they are trying to write about matters they don't fully understand. I will grant, some authors do not appear to do a lick of research and manage to produce bestsellers anyway (and in case you were thinking it, I'm definitely not thinking of Mary Higgins Clark), but the acknowledgements sections of many novels will include experts who shared their time with the author.