The State
by The Associated Press
Tuesday, January 5, 2010

South Carolina has joined nearly three dozen other states that have registries for biological fathers, which adoption advocates hope will shorten the time children spend in foster care.

Columbia adoption lawyer Paul Meding said the registry could shave a couple of months from completing adoptions, ending the practice of running “John Doe” ads in newspapers seeking a biological father.

The new law requires men who believe they may have fathered children to register with the state or they can lose the ability to have a say in whether a child is put up for adoption. The registry cannot be used to pursue child support, according to the law.

Previously, the state Department of Social Services or adoptive parents had to publish an ad weekly, for three consecutive weeks, notifying an unknown father of a pending adoption and the loss of his parental rights.

“You’ve got a waiting child; you’ve got loving parents and at the last minute, all the sudden, they identify this father,” said state Rep. Joan Brady, a Columbia Republican who sponsored the measure.

The state spends about $100,000 yearly on the ads, she said. Advocates acknowledge few people respond to the ads, which were used when a birth mother had not named a father.

The law also requires that hearings to end parental rights be heard within 120 days. Backlogs in family court currently cause cases to be repeatedly delayed, for what can seem a lifetime to young children, Brady said.

Men who are involved in their children’s lives still have to be notified when an effort to end their parental rights is undertaken.

Children Come First, a nonprofit organization that presses for changes in South Carolina’s foster care system, contends the registry will shorten the time children spend in state foster care before adoption, which in 2008 was an average of three years. The federal standard is two years.

“Legal delays often result due to rumors that another man might be the child’s father or because of the legal requirement to notify ‘John Doe’ through publication. The registry will eliminate the expenditure of time, money and public resources currently used searching for fathers who do not want to be found,” the group wrote on its Web site.

The law is modeled after similar ones in 33 other states, including Georgia, Florida and Tennessee.

“If you truly have an interest in your parental rights, if you are truly responsible and earnest in your role in your child’s life and their future, you would place your name on this registry,” Brady said.

Under the law, fathers who have supported a child or woman while pregnant, are currently living with the mother, are listed on the birth certificate, or whom the mother identifies in a sworn statement, still must be notified of adoption or efforts to terminate parental rights.

Unmarried fathers can begin registering Jan. 1. Searches of the registry will replace “John Doe” ads on July 1.