Any suggestions about getting custody of SD?

[purrrfectgirl]

The psycho, vicodin addicted ex who has tried everything to cut us out of DH's kids' lives.  About a year ago a neighbor called to fill us in on the kids' lives at ex's home but was too terrified to testify for fear that DH's ex would kill her.  She told us of the drug addiction (she stole this lady's prescription drugs) she told us of the verbal and mental abuse to the child, she told us of the bribing and threats.

Well, last December (2002) we bought a new house and SD helped me do some of the remodeling on it (she's still helping us this Christmas - no, we're not done yet!).  Her and I were there alone last year and she told me she couldn't wait until this year when she turned 12 so that she could testify in court and come live with us starting in the summer.  Well, I talked to her again last night about if she had thought about it anymore.  She said she still wanted to come live with us as soon as we were ready to take her.  I also found out she was asking DH when we would finish out the basement and move the boys room downstairs (We have my daughter FT and his two boys and SD EOW).  She didn't say anything to DH about wanting to move but we both know she wants to (besides, she's afraid to talk about it in front of her brothers because they may go home and tell mom and then she'd be in big trouble).  She had talked about 50-50 custody before as well.  So when she said she wanted to come live with us I asked her if she wanted to live FT or PT.  Her reply was, and I'm quoting her, "Well, mom's going to be really mad that I want to live with you guys, so I don't think she's going to want to see me so I don't think I can do part-time.  It'll be full-time."  This is a extremely intelligent, mature child who is being raised in an extremely bad environment - she's in the gifted program in her current school.  If we ask for custody her mother will fight us (she doesn't want to see her CS go away).  So, we were thinking maybe over the summer we'd pay her mother full CS and keep our SD full-time (she'd see her mom EOW if her mother wanted to see her) and then at the beginning of the school year petition for emergency custody to get SD to stay with us for good.  It would allow some degree of precedence that she's been living with us for a few months with no complaint by her mom.  (Her mom doesn't really like the kids around - we had them every holiday except July 4 this year, including mother's day and all of their b-days - she just wants the CS, not the kids so getting visitation for the summer is not an issue, she's already offered in past summers.)  The summer thing would also allow SD to get some of her possessions to our house without questions being asked.  Her mother would destroy anything left behind.

Do you think the two months of summer time with us would sway the judge's decision to let her come live with us if SD testified that that was what she