My wife and I recently married in February of this year, and we have some adoption questions. My wife had two children from a past relationship. The father of the girls (7 and 5) has not been around since the youngest one was born. His name is on both of their birth certificates, but i want to adopt them. The problem is he has been gone with out any contact for the past four years. How would I go about adopting the girls and having my name placed on their birth certificates, with out the biological fathers consent? If we could locate him this would not be a problem, but we have tried numerous times to contact him with out any luck. By the way we live in East Texas. Thanks all.

