my ex and i were recently divorced and i have custody of our twin girls and she has custody her son(was never legally adopted by me). she is set to start child support in feb. of 06. her son , jordan, is almost five, and i am still open to adopting him and she is fine with it too, she really thinks i am a good father and wants no-one else to raise him. i really dont want him to grow up wondering why he is the only person in the family with a differnt last name(my ex kept my last name). i mean, eventually m gonna tell him im not his biological dad, but its just the last name that bothers me. anyway, my question is(and it has nothing to do with money, i just want to know) if i adopt him, will they deduct child support from me, or will they just cut the support entirely. im doing fine wihtout child support now, so it really makes no difference to me.

if someone has been through this our knows the legal issues, could you please help me out. thanks

Mike, if he's legally adopted by you then it is just as though he is yours biologically as far as legal matters like that. So yes, it would be taken into consideration for child support. Of course there'd still be formulas to work through as far as who has custody, percentage of time for visitation, incomes of both parties etc. So what you would receive in child support for the twins would be somewhat offset by your financial responsibility for her(your) son.
Also, is there any father listed as his current legal father by way of birth certificate, previous paternity test/paternity decision by the courts. If so you'd have to get the father to sign away his rights to make that adoption happen.

its kind of a weird situation. my ex-wife just doenst seem to care about getting money from jordan's biological father, so on birth records its listed father unknown, so the state/government wouldnt go after him. so she has 100% paternal rights. another reason that i wanted to adopt him, his grandparents(on her side) have always called me his father, when i would call him my step-son they would get up-set and say "no, he is YOUR son". well, now, all of a sudden im a piece of garbage who could never be a real father to jordan, by what i hear through the grapevine. anyway, so i always think about what could happen in the future, and none of us are guaranteed tomorrow, and i just get scared thinking if something happens to brandi(my ex) i would never see jordan again. if i adopted him i would have more pull than they could.