I don't know where to start this, so I will try my best.

My wife and I have been married for nearly 3 years now (come early 2010). She has a daughter that she's been taking care of all her life without any assistance from the biological father; the daughter is now 13 years old. I, obviously, am her step-father and have been assisting my wife in taking care of her for the last 5.5 years (the duration of our entire relationship to each other). I was living overseas for the first 2.5 years of this relationship but journeyed to the USA to meet the family and stayed for nearly 3 months. I then came out permanently in January of 2007 and have been here ever since.

A little history regarding my step-daughter's relationship with her biological dad. Her biological dad was in the picture for the first 1.5 years of her life. Since that age he has been in and out of the picture at random intervals and never really made the time to connect with her even semi-permanently. Over the last 10 years the contact made between the biological dad and step-daughter has been organised and encouraged by my wife and mother in-law (step-daughters grandmother). In fact without my wife or mother in-law's suggestion and persuasion it's impossible to think that biological dad would have been in her life as little as he has been so far in the last 10 years.

Fast forward until now.

Since our last very big argument step-daughter has been good. Really good. In fact so good that we thought she'd grown out of her angst antics a little and started to mature. Biological dad came to pick her up this past Friday night (4th December), and she wanted to come home on Sunday but was unable to because her dad "Didn't feel like driving" (they live approximately 1.5 hours from our home). In fact she was crying and desperately wanting to come home but we had also encouraged her to stay there another night because it was going to be bad weather through the mountain pass in the evening.

This evening (Monday, 7th December), she rings up stating that her dad and his live-in girlfriend are mad at her because the government found out where they were living and want to file for Child Support on our behalf against him. The Child Support papers haven't even been filled out or sent in - they're still sitting blank on the dresser in our bedroom. We don't even know the live-in girlfriend's surname or their address, just the city that they live in. In short we haven't contacted anybody about Child Support at all.

Step-daughter then goes on to say that now her dad wants her to come and live with him and that he's wanted her to be with him all along. As per usual and as expected I (step-father) am being made the scapegoat in this situation even though my wife and I know I've done nothing but support her the best I can.

Some more background information about this ordeal.

A couple of months ago (when the aforementioned last big argument took place) her biological dad said she couldn't live with him because there wasn't enough room in their house and that they didn't have the money to take care of her. He actually told her this so step-daughter stayed with grandmother for a few weeks to let the situation cool off.

Both my wife and I really believe it's very coincidental that biological dad suddenly wants step-daughter to come live with him and that there's enough room and money to support her only after they were contacted about Child Support. It's also coincidental that her biological dad never has the money to buy clothes for her when she needs them for school (we purchase that), buy her school supplies or personal things (we buy them all too), and really only ever gives her things when it's obligatory (Christmas and birthday etc).

The last time we asked him to buy some school clothes for step-daughter he stated "Oh, we have to check our finances", as if we wouldn't remember that one month they didn't have enough money for rent because he bought $600 worth of alcohol (that is a true story and not an exaggeration). Beyond that they also managed to find the money to purchase a new washing machine and clothes dryer but didn't have the money to buy some clothes that couldn't have cost more than $50. Most months I was earning less than $600 working part-time and I still managed to buy her everything she needed for school or otherwise.

We get EBT (Food Stamps), in order to take care of the household for the entire month. We make sure she has everything she needs in terms of milk, cereal and bread. We always buy her snack foods throughout the month and there's always dinner on the table unless one of us is too tired to cook, or it's too late to start if we've been out somewhere. Even then there's dinners she can make for herself - in short she has all the necessities she could possibly need. She has her own room, she has a new bed that we bought near the beginning of the year with our Tax Refund. She keeps her room in an ungodly mess but she'd been cleaning it very well for the past month or so.

She has her own cat and dog - the cat I never wanted in her room in the first place because we'd gone through that before with bad consequences, but I relented and let it stay. The dog stays outside with another dog that I, of course, have become the sole carer of.

She practically gets anything she wants and we only refuse her or punish her when she doesn't do something that we ask her to. For the last two months I haven't allowed her on my computer because her room hasn't been clean. My wife let her on her computer a couple of times out of sympathy. She is rarely punished physically and even then only her mother will do so because I refuse to on the grounds that I am not her blood parent. We allow her to spend the night at her grandmother's place and the weekend at her biological dad's place. We let her spend a lot of time at her favourite cousin's place when she's able to have people over.

She gets into trouble "all the time" at her biological dad's place because a lot of aunts and uncles come over to drink and party. Those same aunts and uncles are left to care for her and treat her badly. She usually calls us crying that somebody is mistreating her (not physically). She has problems "sometimes" with her dad's live-in girlfriend's daughter who is 15 and smokes/drinks at parties right in front of biological dad/live-in girlfriend and they don't care/don't want to know. Recently step-daughter had cigarette butts in her room and while the tenants I had on my property copped the blame in the end I truly believe that her "step-sister" (AKA - live-in girlfriend's daughter), gave them to her and encouraged her to try them.

In short it's as if step-daughter displays the masochistic tendency to want to immerse himself in as painful a situation as possible.

Her biological dad has proven he doesn't really care about her. His live-in girlfriend can "be mean" to her yet she still says she loves her and that she likes being around her. She gets placed behind a queue of kids that aren't even related to her or her biological father and she accepts it without so much as a whimper.

She started to complain to my wife that she was realising her dad really wasn't making the effort to contact her before this sudden change of heart to "let her stay with him". She'd call him all afternoon and ask him to call her back; she'd get a hold of him for a few minutes as he'd promise to "call her back later" (and of course never would). She'd try so hard to get him to swing by and pick her up on the way back from his work every Friday so she could see her other set of siblings (she has a half-sister and half-brother with biological dad's ex-wife.

In short, and I'm sure I've rambled on a lot...

She thinks of her dad as some sort of knight in shining armour that I can't compete with. God forbid she realises that everything she's ever gotten in the last 13 years was due to anybody but him. I've done more for step-daughter in the 5.5 years I've known her mother than her biological dad ever has. I've bought the house that took her away from her alcoholic, drug-addicted; abusive and tormenting uncles. I made sure she had a room to stay in and a bed to sleep on. We made sure that she had the food she needed and a school to go to.

Her dad's done next to nothing for her yet she wants to be with him because she's been sweet-talked to for the past couple of days.

Now... to the real question here:

We are contemplating taking this all the way to court. We dislike the fact that biological dad is basically using step-daughter's love and affection as a pawn to avoid paying Child Support to my wife. We are disgusted that it has even come to this. I am personally disgusted that step-daughter holds a candle to her biological dad that she can't see how much he doesn't care about her or for her and hasn't all her life. I have lost all respect for biological dad; I used to have some because I could see that he would come to pick her up for a weekend, even if it was only once every 3 weeks or once a month.

In the end... what are our chances?

I have nothing to hide in court. I've never abused my step-daughter, neither has my wife. She has physically punished her but it's been so rare (it's never been a daily... not even weekly thing, for instance). We own our house, we rarely ever drink at home (and if we do it's usually because step-daughter is away from home at the time). We aren't drug-addicts, we aren't alcoholics. I was employed but now am looking for work, we still have EBT/Food Stamps to ensure that we never run out of the basic essentials.

Is it a real possibility that step-daughter's wishes to be with her biological father will be all that is needed to take step-daughter away from us? From her mother that's taken care of her all her life? Will the courts simply see those wishes and ignore everything else?