Practice Focus

Our firm focuses on adoption, dependency, termination of parental rights, paternity, surrogacy and appeals.

Listed below is a comprehensive list of services we offer our clients.

Adoption

Melissa handles every type of adoption including: private adoptions of non-relative children, relative children, stepchildren, and adults; and adoptions of foster children (State adoptions). More than 50-percent of her cases involve adoption.

Dependency

When a child is at risk of abuse, abandonment or neglect, the State or a citizen can bring an action to remove the child from the harmful circumstances. This is called a dependency action.

As an attorney for Department of Children and Family Services and then as an Assistant State Attorney in Pasco County, Florida, Melissa prosecuted State-initiated dependency actions.

Now in her own practice, many of her cases are private dependency actions brought by concerned relatives or neighbors.

Termination of Parental Rights

In order to adopt a child, the parental rights of the child's parents must first be terminated. Some parents consent to their parental rights being terminated, and others do not.

Melissa handles uncontested as well as contested termination of parental rights cases, whether the child is a relative, a stepchild, or a non-relative.

Melissa has also had several clients who were awarded permanent guardianship of a child through a State-initiated dependency action, but then later decided they wanted to adopt the child. Melissa has terminated parental rights in those cases and completed the adoption.

Paternity

Most unmarried fathers do not know they must claim and/or establish paternity of a child in order to preserve their parental rights to the child. To claim paternity of a child, go to the Florida Department of Health immediately.

In addition to filing a claim of paternity, an unmarried biological father must provide support to the birth mother (during pregnancy) and to the child, if he is to establish his parental rights to his child.

If an unmarried biological father is served with a Notice of Intended Adoption Plan, he must claim paternity, provide support, and must respond to the Notice of Intended Adoption Plan with a sworn statement that he is willing and able to care for and support the child. Go to the Florida Statutes and read sections 63.053 and 63.054 for more information.

Melissa represents unmarried fathers who desire to establish paternity, preserve parental rights to a child, and who are seeking visitation or custody.

Surrogacy

Florida's surrogacy statute, specifically F.S. 742.11 through 742.16, is one of the best in the nation for insuring the enforceability of a gestational surrogacy agreement. Melissa has represented gestational surrogates and the intended parents in her practice.

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