My husband and his ex girlfriend have a child together he wants to sign his rights over but the courts keep telling us that she has to file the paperwork. She barely lets him see her and then he is not allowed to bring her to our house. Is there any way he can terminate his parental rights without having to have her file the paperwork or going to court?! Any help would be great we do not have the money for a lawyer and we are trying to avoid court thanks

The short answer is: no, there's not.

Despite what most parents think, he's not asking the court to terminate HIS rights, he's asking the court to terminate the CHILD'S right to TWO parents. Courts rarely do this. Cases where it is likely to be considered are when (a) the parent has no ABILITY to parent (such as being incarcerated for an extensive period of time, or completely physically disabled, like in an extended coma), or (b) has a violent criminal history that makes the court think that the parent is a danger to the child, or (c) when the other parent marries and the new spouse wants to adopt. In VERY rare cases, court will terminate parental rights when the custodial parent can prove abandonment AND that they alone are well equipped to care for the child themselves (including having a contingency plan as to what happens to the child if the parent gets hit by a bus).

Does dad have a visitation order in place? If so, mom needs to be following it, and if she's not, dad's recourse is to file for contempt to enforce his visitation. If he doesn't have such an order, mom doesn't have to let him see the child AT ALL.

The reality of the situation is that unless dad meets one of the criteria above, he can be reasonably assured that the court is NOT going to terminate his parental rights, OR his legal ties to the child. If visitation is the issue, he needs to address it via the process. But he's not going to be able to "bail" on the child just because he doesn't like the visitation scenario.

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I agree with aardvarc. Have you browsed through the information in LawInfo's Free Legal Resource Center to learn more about your issue yet? See: http://www.lawinfo.com/consumer.html and http://resources.lawinfo.com/en/index.html. You can certainly try to speak to a lawyer to determine what legal options may be available. In the meantime, you may be able to learn more on your own. Search the "Free Legal Resources" tab, or browse the Consumer Resources. Good luck.