So, I have been on another rewrite of my story and I have tried my best to avoid this can of worms, but seems I can't. Hence, I need some help from Family Law Paralegals, Lawyers, and anyone else involved. Because this is going to be a lot to unpack here. Objective: Get my MC into a house with loving parents that are NOT related to him. Jurisdiction: USA - Mississippi to Kansas (Where the good parents are.) I am not sure if it's state or federal. Time era: 2010-2020? Something around those times. And modern. Not an AU of any kind. Basically, my MC's parents find out he's gay and are not pleased at all. A few months of back and forth fighting. MC decided to kill himself. Ends up in the hospital instead with magic powers, because that's part of the story. Then, is found by the other characters in the story who also have magic powers. Parents don't show up at the hospital and seem to want nothing with their son anymore. But the people with magic powers now want the MC to be part of the group and he doesn't want to go back to his horrible family. So, this is where I get stuck. Because of the other characters, Mary wants to adopt my MC who is like 15-16 at the time of these events. But I don't know how that can happen smoothly. I doubt I could just have the MC's character's parents just sign away parental rights. But that's where some magic could happen to make it just occur, because of the laws of this story universe. What I want to know is, what is the process for parents who don't want their kids anymore, how fast could it all happen if there was NO resistance and all that? Also, how would Mary adopt the MC?
Parents absolutely can just sign away their parental rights. They'd need the services of an adoption attorney, but if it's a private adoption where the adoptive parents are already known, it's not a complicated process. I've not been through it but I know people who have. The hang up is usually in how long it takes to get it in front of a judge to sign off on it. State specific laws usually relate to what is required to convince the judge that it's in the child's best interest and how long everyone has to change their minds. I don't know those for Mississippi.
I don't think readers will expect 100% accuracy as long as it is reasonable. Parents can put their kids up for adoption or set up an arranged adoption but I'm sure this takes time, although sometimes it may go more quickly if the process was begun during pregnancy which doesn't apply here. In your case, I don't think it's unrealistic for this to happen assuming the parents support it, and you could just write it so that while the case is in legal limbo the MC could live with Mary, provided the biological parent's don't call the authorities, and then at some point there would be a court hearing and the custody would be transferred. There's also the possibility of emancipation, where the child is declared independent of their parent. This varies state by state, but in your case, it might be possible, and the court would consider the MC's age, maturity level, support systems (Mary), and general lack of support/interest from their parent's in his well being. MS may not have a limit on the age of emancipation, but emancipation of a 15 or 16 year may be plausible in this case. Any younger and I think it would be unlikely, or at least harder to convince the court. Some states have safe haven laws where new mothers can drop of newborns without risk of prosecution. This is done to protect newborns and reduce the possibility of abandonment in a dangerous environment or infanticide. A lot of these laws were passed within the past 20 years, but in 2008, Nebraska passed such a law but didn't put an UPPER limit on the age of the child (usually it's like 2 weeks after birth). So there were some parents taking advantage of this loophole and dropping off teenage kids they didn't want to deal with anymore, some of them were from out of state. The law was quickly changed to stop this and return the teenagers to their parents, but this is the type of thing you might have in your story. Just abandoning their kid at the hospital seems like the type of thing that would make your scenario possible - I just don't see a court returning a kid to parents that don't want them and are hostile to their lifestyle. But I have no idea how long it would take legally, but as long as you don't imply that it happened in a few days or weeks I think the readers won't care.
If there's magic, just have to adult magic user work a spell to short-cut things, like moving up a schedule and/or influencing the judge in her favor.
