I married my wife in 2012 and she had a 5 year old son at the time who I love very much. We lived in NC when she was granted custody of him but have since moved to GA. Child support was never ordered by the court because custody was decided in mediation. The biological fathers only request was that my wife not make him pay child support. So she agreed and he signed the paperwork. The bio father has visitation 4 weeks during the summer and every odd year for holidays and tax exemptions.

There is no order for child support, NC no longer has jurisdiction over the child because it is not his home state and he does not offer any support. If we ask him to pay for something such as soccer shoes or school clothes he comes up with an excuse as to why he cant. The child is 8 now. I am the only person in my household that works (my wife is a stay at home mom) and we have another 4 year old son. Since 2012 when I took on the role of step father we have received maybe $80 from his bio father. I pay for health insurance, dental insurance, vision, extracurricular activities, toys, clothes, food, housing…. everything.

When his bio father calls and says I want to have him next weekend we have to meet him half way (200 miles from my home). Why doesn’t he take all that extra money he’s been saving and drive all the way down to my house and get him? Now I make really good money so I am not complaining. It is a gift of love; it is something I want to do. The child, and I refer to him as that for anonymity, has special needs. He was born at 26 weeks gestational age so he is a little bit behind on things. He received occupational therapy once a week to help refine his fine motor skills such as writing; this is paid for by the state because it is a function of the public school system. He also has some very deadly allergies to some very common things. We had him enrolled in public school but that didn’t work out, it was dangerous given his life threatening allergy and his teacher’s lack of common sense so we took him out of public school and decided to home school the rest of 1st grade and all of 2nd grade. This was discussed with his biological father and he also agreed that this was a good idea. He still received his occupational therapy through the school system only the therapist actually came to our home to do it. Now that he is going to 3rd grade and our other son is getting older we have decided that maybe private school at a small private school would be a better option. Occupational therapy would have to be paid for by the health insurance I provide and anything before our deductible is met will have to come out of our pockets. My wife and I have decided that we will be paying for tuition every month and asked his father to pay for school uniforms. He agreed. I sent him a text message last week and reminded him that we needed $300 from him for the uniforms, the school requires them to be bought from a certain store here in GA for uniformity reason, and he told me that anything involving the child was none of my business and that I needed to tell my wife to call him. I told him that was very rude but ok. Now I have been picking up the tab for 4 years now. I have been the one supporting this young man. I have been the one teaching him to tie his shoes and ride a bike. I have talked to my wife and asked that she take him to court for a child support order adjustment but she refuses to citing that she doesn’t want to create waves or upset his bio father because she is scared that he will put up a fight and this will drag her 8 year old son into a court dispute that he doesn’t need to be involved in. she also states that it may create animosity between her and her ex and it’s “just easier when everybody gets along, besides he won’t pay it anyways”. This is putting a strain on our relationship because I feel as though her ex was dis-respectful to me, I feel like she should stand up to him and either require him to relinquish his rights so that I may adopt the child or he should be forced to pay child support or face the consequences. I feel like I have no rights to the child but I am expected to pay for everything that he needs. Now I will gladly accept the financial responsibility of this child but I also want to be his dad. What should I do?????