permanent resident and name change help

[Britmom 0]

Hello all - sorry in advance about the long post and the fact that it is more of a family issue just wondering if anyone else has done the same or similar thing . . .

Myself, husband and 8 year old child have recently moved to NY from UK and myself and child currently hold permanent resident cards CR1 and CR2 (husband is originally from US and we met in UK). In order to take my child out of the UK it was costly and lengthy court battle which resulted in an order (which is now mirrored in the US) made by UK court for child to have yearly direct contact with bio father and frequent indirect contact. Contact between bio father and child has never been good at all. Since the move (despite our best efforts to encourage contact) bio father contacts child less and less (bio is type who likes the fight and now the fight is no longer there he has lost interest in child :0(, which is sad but was expected). Right before move bio said that I could change childs surname to step fathers surname (I never asked before so this was out of the blue for us). I said the decision would be up to child and would not want to change name at that time because of passports and pending visas.

Now moved and settled and new baby on the way, we would like to give our older child the family name and child would very much like that too. I have dropped it in an email 3 times to bio but he responds about other things but not the name change (I didn't ask questions for him to respond to, just said that it was something that we would be thinking about doing soon, but still thought he would have addressed what I was saying).

As I mentioned above, coming over here ran up significant costs and we are trying to avoid lawyer fees for this (if we do need a lawyer we will have to wait a little longer). I am looking on the internet for information, but being a bit of a complex situation I'm not finding much and to begin with and at this time we are just finding out the cost of doing this - so excuse me for not knowing much to begin with. So here are my questions . . . where do I go to change a child's surname or where do I begin - would it be the local court? what form and how much does it cost to change a child's surname on a CR2 visa? In UK passport there is a US visa issued by the US Embassy in London, does this need to be changed also, or now that I have the resident card does that cancel out the visa in UK passport? If anyone is from UK . . . do you know if I will have problems changing child's surname from a different country or do I just need to send them evidence of name change?) As you can see I really don't know where to start, any help at all would be very much appreciated.

Many thanks for reading.

[Inky 1,111]

I know you talk about lengthy expencive court battles before moving but is adoption a posibility? A similar issue happend to my cousin with her son and his father and she was able to prove abandonment on the side of the father so her new husband adopted her son and took his name that way.

[Britmom 0]

I know you talk about lengthy expencive court battles before moving but is adoption a posibility? A similar issue happend to my cousin with her son and his father and she was able to prove abandonment on the side of the father so her new husband adopted her son and took his name that way.

My husband would love to adopt him and I will have a look into it but doubt bio will go for that (I was really surprised when he first mentioned name change but adoption is another matter altogether I think for bio), although contact is getting less and less frequent, contact although limited, is still there. It may be that he changes his mind on name change as he has a tendency to do that also. If bio does stop contacting then adoption will defo be the road we take but until then we are just hoping for child to be legally known as our surname. =0)

[Inky 1,111]

My husband would love to adopt him and I will have a look into it but doubt bio will go for that (I was really surprised when he first mentioned name change but adoption is another matter altogether I think for bio), although contact is getting less and less frequent, contact although limited, is still there. It may be that he changes his mind on name change as he has a tendency to do that also. If bio does stop contacting then adoption will defo be the road we take but until then we are just hoping for child to be legally known as our surname. =0)

Awesome, Either way I hope things work out for the better for you guys! Our family has a long line of " disappearing fathers " so I kind of know your pains.

[Britmom 0]

Awesome, Either way I hope things work out for the better for you guys! Our family has a long line of " disappearing fathers " so I kind of know your pains.

Thank you =0)