Familiar Terminology
If your father dies when you are a child and later your mother remarries and your "new father" adopts you, is he considered your step-father, or your adopted-father? (In any culture).
6 Answers
In Louisiana, an adoptive father is legally in all respects "the father." If the new husband does not adopt the child, he is the "step-father" and does not have the same rights a parent would.
I know of one case personally where a daughter was legally adopted by her mother's husband. If the girl in question had not been adopted and went between households of the mother and the father she would be considered a step child to the non-biological parent. In her case however her biological father abandoned her and so her step-father's adoption of her makes her in every sense his daughter.
In your case, Julian, where the father dies then there is no father-child relationship in the natural sense and if the husband of the mother refuses to adopt the child, the child is a step-child. Once he /she is adopted he / she ceases to be a step-child.
I live in the United States and I am not quoting law but am confident that what I described is legal.
Edited in: I have not heard the term adopted-father used except to describe an action not a relationship.
Personally, it depends on how big a role the man played in your childhood. If they were functionally the equivalent of a father (i.e. your memories of childhood involve this man acting as a father), then I would say father. If he only recently entered the picture, step father.
I've personally not heard of the term "adopted" father, but that could just be me [North-Eastern US]
Step-father until he legally adopts you, then he's both. That's the UK legal answer.
In England step parents do adopt their partner's children. Birth mother/father are used informally but natural parent is more usual. It can be important if you are spending a lot of time caring for a child to have your responsibilities recognised in law. However, that can be done by a parental responsiblity order or a residence order. I don't know the law in Scotland because despite all living on the same island we have very different legal systems. Increasingly adoptions are becoming more open. It may be the court would decide the child should not change their surname, but if their Mum has new children with their stepfather, they often want to share a surname with their siblings. However,adoption means they would inherit from their 'new' father rather than old family [where they are not named specifically in a will]
Clarification about my previous post, mostly in reply to Julian and Winkfish:
1 For a deceased parent, I said there was no relationship because no matter how much the child may love the memory (if any) of the decedent, a true parent-child relationship (outside of religious faith) can only exist between two living members. I did not mean to imply that a child cannot love and cherish the deceased parent's memory.
2 I was not confident using the term "adoptive" in my answer though I know that in some cases there can be varying degrees of relationship between the adopted child and the biological parent and adopting parent. But in Julian's original question he was asking about the term "adopted father", and in his example I think the term is not commonly used.
