This is the second appearance of this matter before this Court. In the first, Hall v. Coleman ,1 Hall I Ricky and Laura Coleman filed a petition to adopt A.S., a minor child, in Laurens County Superior Court. Attached thereto was the biological mother’s surrender of rights and consent to adoption, which indicated that the child’s biological father was unknown. Steven Hall received notice of the upcoming adoption proceeding and filed a motion to intervene and stay the adoption, claiming that he was A.S.’s biological father and that the child was legitimate.2 The trial court ordered a blood test, and Hall filed a petition to legitimate, which the trial court denied on the grounds that Hall was not the child’s “legal father” because his marriage to the child’s mother was bigamous, and therefore, void, despite DNA testing that proved Hall was the child’s biological father.3 We reversed the trial court’s denial of the petition, holding that the “child was legitimate because the child was the issue of marriage, born before the marriage was declared void,”4 and that Hall was the child’s legal father.5 On remand, we instructed the trial court “to determine whether adoption is proper in this case based on the appropriate provisions of the adoption statute.”6 Hall took no affirmative action to acquire custody of A.S. after our ruling and has taken no such steps to date. On May 15, 2001, the Colemans filed two additional actions, one to terminate Hall’s parental rights and the other for custody of A.S. The parties agreed to consolidate the three actions filed by the Colemans for an evidentiary hearing and to include the evidence from Hall’s legitimation action for the court’s consideration. The trial court entered three separate orders, granting the adoption, terminating Hall’s parental rights, and granting the Colemans custody of A.S. Hall appeals, enumerating as error the entry of each order.
As stated in Hall I , the record shows that Hall and Nancy Hobby were married on February 27, 1997, after Hobby told Hall that she was pregnant with his child. Hall and Hobby ended their relationship at some point in the summer of 1997. On October 1, 1997, the child of Hall and Hobby, whose adoption is at issue in this case, was born. Although the date is not clear from the record, at some point, Hall learned that his marriage to Hobby was void because she had not been divorced from a prior husband when she and Hall wed.7 Hall did not provide any support, including medical care, to Hobby when she was pregnant or during her hospitalization after she gave birth to A.S. Within 30 days of his birth, A.S. was voluntarily placed with the Colemans by DFACS, after Hobby abandoned him. A.S. has remained in the custody of the Colemans since that time.
