Mother attempt to Terminate fathers parental rights (PAS)

[mango]

Wow, I have not been here for a while and went to post this on the Soc section and saw he no longer answers here. Maybe someone out there can offer some helpful advice to our problem. Long post.

Ohio. Child is almost 15. Parents never married. Currently have a shared parenting plan 50/50, no child support order.

My husband has been actively involved in his daughters life since birth. At age 2 the mother left him (& her) and went out of the county to pursue an MBA and career. She later obtained a job in NY city. Meanwhile the child lived primarily with the father (my hubby). Mother had many visits but was unstable with employment and housing so SD primarily lived with her father/us. (no legal order then). She went back and forth from Ohio to wherever mom was at the time...but lived with dad.

When the child turned 5 and hubby and I became engaged, the mother wanted to have SD come to NY to stay for 9 months. My hubby did not want to have her gone for that long and refused to send her. She secretly came to Ohio and took her from the daycare and my hubby filed a restraint, and got her back. The custody wars began then. Mother was forced to move to Ohio to fight if she had any chance of a shared order. 2 years after, we finalized with a shared 50/50 plan, and every 2 years she would get restless with the custody orders. At one point she managed to work a "written temp plan" outside of court to switch between OH and MO, as she relocated there for a "job of a lifetime". This was a mistake on our part to allow this. As she subsequently filed for sole custody while in MO, and she was forced by the Ohio courts to return to Ohio again if she wanted any custody. As a bone they offered her the "school district", if she came back. So she now holds the school district with a 50/50 order. (Very clever) Once she got the school district it seemed dad was left in the dust. She chose an apartment and a school far enough away from our house, to make it difficult to have a shared order on many levels. She continued to attempt to file for sole custody stating us to be "inferior" to her abilities to provide etc. Her attempts were unsuccessful.

We literally are a hard working wholesome normal everyday family, with no drugs, violence, etc. The GAL, judge, etc  found nothing with her claims and has never revoked dads rights or reduced his parenting time. Two years ago (last time in court) right after the judge ruled to dismiss her request to terminate dads rights the GAL suggested (in private) that we should file for sole, based on mom's mental state and constant PAS. She further felt that mental evaluation should be done on her.  My husband and I have 3 small kids of our own, and have literally put every penny into these battles, and opted not to pursue yet another stressful litigation that "may or may not" yield him sole custody. We also had to consider another school switch. So we left it as the 50/50 plan, and did not pursue sole. (SD was 12 then)  Furthermore the past 9+ years worth of custody (as well as the court battles for her unfounded contempt claims, and her legally changing SD last's name) had really done us in financially and emotionally, and we did not want to subject SD to further litigation and duress. We felt it best to let it lie, and hopefully it was over once and for all.

Soon after (about 6 months after) SD began to refuse to come with dad (just turned age 13). He tried for several months to pick her up at her school on his designated parenting time, and she refused to get in the car. She ignored us at school functions, and rarely returned calls. We decided to give her some space, as we understood the stress she undergoes with the exchanges and the constant hostile feelings her mother has towards us. We had hoped she would want to see us and her siblings soon but did not pressure her. But she did not call. In 2007 she came for a few hours on fathers day (by her own request?), and for 2 days at Christmas (2 visits in one year). She acted pretty normal towards us during those visits, and her dad asked her to please come see us more often, and she promised she would. We have not seen her since December 07. (Incidentally she has no siblings on her moms side.)

We just received a motion from her mother for "termination of all parental rights" requesting sole custody. Probably will claim that the father has not been involved, etc.

I do want to mention that during all this litigation since the mother has moved in and out of state numerous times, and the only way the court would grant her the school district was to address this concern with a disclaimer stating that she was not allowed to leave her current town for any reason, if this would happen the father would get automatic custody with out a hearing before the court.

We assume this new motion is more an issue of moving away then it is her starting to collect CS or terminating visitation (afterall we hardly see her as it stands). CS has never been a big issue between them. We assume she is considering a move out of the country, as this was a concern 2 years ago. Now even though we don't see his daughter now, we are at least happy that she is finally in one school and making friends. She has 3 years left of HS, and we had hoped she could stay at that HS, and maybe when she is 18 when she is out from her mothers control she will come see us on her own accord. If her mother does move out of the country there is a good chance that we will NOT see her again after 18. (This is however all speculations on our part)

We know that attempting to fight for sole is pointless as by the time it goes before a judge it could be 2 years off, and she will be 16-17 anyway. As well as the fact that she is pretty settled in her school and that is not something we wan to mess with for her sake. (Her mother has little regard for her daughters ties to us/her siblings or her friends/school) My husband loves his daughter enough to give her the space she wanted and to be there and fight for his right to see her and have a relationship with her, but at this point we can't afford this continuous hardship to our family.

Sorry for the long post, tried to summarize as best as I could.

My questions?

1.) Can she have his rights "terminated" without his consent?

2.) If he does consent can he still request that the mother stay in her same location until daughter graduates from same school?

3.) We can't afford an attorney, can we request a public defender? If so how do you go about that? Is it income based? And is it based on his or family income? Either way I think we could qualify.

4.) Can we request the same GAL we had before?

5.) If we were to hire an attorney is there any way we can request court costs and attorney fees, due to the constant harassment?

5.) Any suggestions would be appreciated.

[lilywhite]

1.) Can she have his rights "terminated" without his consent?

No.

2.) If he does consent can he still request that the mother
stay in her same location until daughter graduates from same
school?

Of course not.  If he terminates his rights, he's a legal stranger and has no rights.

3.) We can't afford an attorney, can we request a public
defender? If so how do you go about that? Is it income based?
And is it based on his or family income? Either way I think we
could qualify.

Public defenders are only for criminal cases.  So, no.

4.) Can we request the same GAL we had before?

Probably.

5.) If we were to hire an attorney is there any way we can
request court costs and attorney fees, due to the constant
harassment?

You could ask but you've waited too long to claim harassment.  How long has it been since she filed anything before this?  Statute of limitations is usually 2 years for civil suits.

5.) Any suggestions would be appreciated.
I don't have any.  You'll most likely end up paying child support and having the same schedule.

I'm not an attorney and have no legal background.  Just been divorced for a number of years from a man who did sue me constantly and I never got any attorney's fees.

[mango]

Thank you for the response. I think our best route is to get the same GAL, and also show how the mother refused to take her to the court ordered psych appointments. They will likely re-instate those before anything. If nothing else it will probably turn out good for us because the court might make her mom allow her to visit us at least. We know deep down her mom is behind her refusal to see us. She has never been unhappy with us, she just has to deal with her moms anger and grilling when she returns to her mom. I'm sure she has less stress without seeing us, but I think it's good for young girls (especially teens) to have a good bond with their dads.

So this is probably a blessing in disguise.

[knoot7]

Actually there is some wrong information provided. At least from my experience and knowledge of the family court system. However, I am limited to NYS.

You can get a public defender even if it is not criminal. Our BM did just this. The key is no matter what the case or how often you go to court, if it is a different reason - One for visitation change, One for removing parental rights, one for contempt, etc what ever it may be...they do not get lumped together. Each request is viewed as an individual court case and each time you would have to apply for a Public Defender. The famiy court would have forms to fill out to receive an attorney to help your case. Our BM got reprimanded by the judge since it was viewed as two different cases instead of one releated to the other. Our BM got a public defender as she does not work. BUT fair warning the public defender didn't do much - ok she didn't do anything from what I heard from our attorney.

Additionally in NYS - the GAL remains the same, I would imagine this would be the case in most states. BM took us to court in 2001 and we took BM to court in 2006 - the GAL remained the same. Which stunk for us as the GAL was projecting all of his experiences with his son onto my SS and his situation. He was NOT looking out for SS best interest, he was only interested in keeping things the same despite if it was in SS best interest.

As for requesting attorney's fees. Yes you can request this...and you may even get granted for it as it can be viewed as "frivilously (sp?)" using the courts time or the father's time. We have it in DH's agreement if it is frivilous and unfounded all attorney fess are paid for by the other. This avoided BM taking us to court 10 times over for nothing but her own gain.

[mango]

Thanks for the info. I will check it out. This is frivilous, because I looked up in the revised code, and for her to get teh courts to terminate he would have had to do something bad. His lack of seeing his daughter was only because she refused to come, and he gave her some space. He has asked her repeatedly to come visit us, so he did not "abandon" his daughter. Now, there is no CS order, because we had a 50/50 arrangement, and even though we no longer are physically seeing her, he still sent money to teh BM for school costs, etc. So i'ts not like he has disconnected.

He did stop going to the parent teacher conferences this school year only because we did not see her anymore, and we really don't ahve any input into her school with the teachers, so it was ot really productive to go. However we still get the report cards from the school and monitor her grades.

This termination of his rights is not going to fly, and they will see right through it.

[Kitty C.]

He could not exercise his parental rights NOT because his daughter refused to go, but because the mother refused to 'make' her go.  By saying the daughter refused to go implies that it was up to the daughter if she wanted to go or not, and that is NOT the case.  This all ties in to PAS:  the custodial parent implies to the child how 'bad' it is at the other parent, the child refuses to go (mostly to appease the CP), and the CP states they can't 'make' the child go, which is total BS.

If you make it to court on this one, throw that back in her face.  because I'm betting there's something in the CO somewhere that states something to the effect of the CP 'making the child available' (or some other equal verbage) for the NCP parenting time.  If you get the right judge, they will ask the CP why they didn't make the child go, when they were CO'd to.

But you should continue to go to the school conferences, whether you see her or not.  It's more productive than you know:  it gives you an idea of what she's doing with her time and shows the school that you are involved, no matter what.