CANTON, Mass. (AP) – A 15-year-old who won a lengthy legal battle to “divorce” his murderer-father last summer was all smiles after he was adopted by his long-term guardians.

“It’s good to know you can’t go back,” Patrick Holland said, immediately after his adoption became final Thursday.

“I don’t think I’ll ever be over it, but it’s a step forward,” he said of his mother’s 1998 murder by his father. “It’s about the biggest step you can take at one time.”

Patrick was adopted by Ron and Rita Lazisky, close friends of his mother.

The Laziskys, of Sandown, N.H., have cared for him since shortly after Daniel Holland killed Liz Holland at her Quincy, Mass., home in 1998, leaving 8-year-old Patrick to find her body the next morning. Daniel Holland is serving life in prison without parole.

Both adoptive parents also beamed as they left the brief, closed adoption hearing in Norfolk County Probate and Family Court.

“I’m just so happy. I never thought I’d see the day,” Rita Lazisky said.

Her husband said: “I had to hold back tears. It’s been a very uphill battle for us for four years.”

Patrick was one of the first children to initiate a parental-rights termination proceeding against one parent for killing the other. He said Daniel Holland forfeited any right to be his father the night he shot Liz Holland eight times.

After his mother’s death, the Massachusetts Department of Social Services put Patrick in a “bridge” home, where he lingered as grandparents on both sides competed with the Laziskys for custody.

Patrick wanted to live with the Laziskys, and was placed with them after they qualified as foster parents.

Massachusetts social workers then brokered a settlement with Daniel Holland’s parents, the boy’s grandparents, that made the Laziskys the boy’s legal guardians. But the agreement stipulated they could not seek to adopt him until 2005. Because there was no adoption, Daniel Holland’s parental rights were not terminated.

That was fine with Patrick, until his father began seeking his school and counseling records. He decided to go to court.

After nearly three years of legal wrangling over whether a minor could sue for the termination of parental rights and whether the case belonged in Massachusetts or New Hampshire, the Department of Social Services stepped in and helped Patrick get a hearing.

On the eve of trial last July, Daniel Holland agreed to settle, signing away his parental rights in an agreement also specifying that Patrick was the sole heir to his mother’s estate.

That cleared the way for the adoption and for settlement of the estate, which had been in limbo for years and would have remained that way until Daniel Holland exhausted all his appeals on the murder conviction.

The family said their next goal is to push for the passage of “Patrick’s Law” by the Legislature.

The bill, modeled on a New Hampshire law, would automatically suspend the parental rights of any parent convicted of murdering the other, but give the couple’s children a say in whether those rights would be terminated permanently.

The Laziskys will be on Patrick’s new birth certificate, but Patrick will keep the last name Holland, because he shared it with his mother.

“It’s the name I’ve known. It would be really hard to change it now,” he said.

Massachusetts routinely issues new birth certificates in adoptions, with the names of the adoptive parents and, if desired, a new name for the child.

The original birth certificate is kept under seal at the Department of Vital Statistics and Records and can be opened only by court order.

Patrick read an excerpt from his certificate of adoption as he left the courtroom.

“This adoption is final and irrevocable,” he said.