In re E.P. CA6

I. FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND

Father, a staff sergeant in the Air Force, currently is stationed at McConnell Air Force Base in Wichita, Kansas. He and mother became friends when he was stationed in Monterey, California. While mother and father were never romantically involved, they decided to have a child together and to share parenting responsibilities. After mother became pregnant in 2009, father was deployed. Mother stopped communicating with father and did not inform him when E.P. was born. Father learned about E.P.’s birth through social media, located mother through her relatives, and visited E.P. for the first time when the child was about two weeks old. Father also visited E.P.--who was living in Salinas with mother, his maternal grandmother, and his maternal aunt--for approximately one week when the child was three months old, and again when the child was six months old. Father next saw E.P. when the child was three years old and mother took him to Texas to meet father’s parents. Between visits, father stayed in touch with E.P. by Skype. Father, who was not on E.P.’s birth certificate, established his paternity in 2010. He has since paid back child support and…