Legal Question in Family Law in Missouri

Re: child abandenment

Are you remarried? If so, you and your wife MAY be able to pursue a step-parent adoption of your son and thereby terminate the absent mother's parental rights. (Abandonment for more than six months happens to be one of the grounds for terminating parental rights in a step-parent adoption in Missouri, making the biological mom's voluntary consent to the adoption unnecessary.) Whether this option is available depends on numerous other factors, too. Does mom pay child support? Is she REALLY impossible to locate? What kind of contact does mom have with your son, including by mail or telephone? Will mom consent to the step-parent adoption (making proof of abandonment unnecessary)?

The termination of parental rights + step-parent adoption would have the effect of substituting the stepmom for the biological mom for all legal purposes, including custody rights. Without the termination of parental rights however (a required part of step-parent adoption), if something were to happen to you, your son's biological mother would most likely have paramount rights as to custody, regardless of whomever you would want to have custody.

Another option is to pursue a motion to modify the current temporary custody schedule, in view of mom's absence and/or distance from your son's home. But this isn't going to achieve what seems like your ultimate goal: preventing your son from going into his mother's custody if something happened to you.