Mother has legal custody; we keep child

[jess316]

Yikes! Be careful with this one! You guys should find a good lawyer immediately, and get all of the documentation you can. My husband and I were in a similar situation, his ex had agreed to let their daughter live with us and only visit her on weekends, this continued for almost a year, so we finally filed to have the change legalized to prevent her from changing her mind like your husband's ex did. Even as she was filing paperwork to have our request refused, the child was still living with us, with her mother's permission. Imagine our shock when we got the letter from the courts not only refusing to legalize the change, but refusing to even give us a hearing and that we had to send my stepdaughter back to her mother every week as per their divorce agreement. Let me know what happens, and if anyone else has any suggestions for either of us, I would love to hear them. Best of luck. Hopefully your state is more open-minded than Arizona.


Jessica

[Tennessee Dad]

Sorry to hear about your situation.  We have documentation and have had the child the majority of the time the last 3 years; roughly 2/3's of the time last year.  We have already talked to an attorney, but are waiting now to see what will happen next.  The BM (after she got over her fit) asked if we wanted daughter back on Thursday, as usual.  So, we have her now!  She won't go back to BM until Monday after school.

I don't know what will happen when we go to court; the GM is (JMHO) unstable, so we are being very cautious not to upset the arrangement we have now.  We are trying to be sure that when we file, we can win.  We saw BM's father today, and he and his family are all on our side.   The BM's parents were divorced when she was very young; she never had any stability in her life, so she sees nothing wrong with the way she is living now.  

We just want to try our best to protect this little girl.