Can I File for Termination of Parental Rights Without an Attorney in Blount County, Tennessee?

Hello folks …

I hope you’re all doing well. I am currently in a challenging situation and would greatly appreciate any guidance. I’m looking to file for the Termination of Parental Rights due to abandonment, as I want to move forward with a step-parent adoption for my child. My ex-partner has been absent for quite some time, and I genuinely believe he wouldn’t contest this if I can even locate him to serve him the papers.

You probably won’t get the termination just because of public policy reasons. The most realistic option for you is to modify the custody order to take away his parenting time and legal decision-making rights.

Juz stick to the schedule and keep your records. When you take it to court, I promise the judge will see everything, and they’ll end his rights. Always have those papers ready in case he decides to show up.

He probably asked for that placement juz to lower his child support and never really intended to go through with it since he didn’t have that placement at first. Go ahead and file; the court will either find him or you can hire a process server. If they still can’t track him down, you’ll likely have to notify him by public notice in the newspaper for a few weeks.

I know the child support office has a court date set because he didn’t respond to a delinquency letter, so hopefully that’ll make it easier to find him to serve him. We have the child support court in November. THNKS FOR THE TIPS…
Do you have any ideas on how to file? I couldn’t find the forms on the county or state government/court websites, so I’m guessing I need to go in person to get them.

In Wisconsin, we have online court access, and all our county family courts have the documents available. Just a heads up, though: adoption is a complicated legal issue, so you’ll definitely need a lawyer for that.