Advice Please. (Kinda Long)

[FedupMomma]

I am not sure if this goes here or should go in another area. If I am wrong I apologize. I just found this board today and I have been reading to the point my head hurts.  Sorry this is long.

  My situation. BM had split custody with my DH he had physical custody always and a higher percentage of days. Split was 6 days BM 8 days DH.  SS would come home from BM with tons of stories and bruises, He wasn't fed properly, etc. etc.  Called CYS they did nothing because of child's age, filed a report with main office still nothing, our cys here isn't the best they basically told us he would have to be in the hospitalized before they could take action against her.  Went back to court BM visits where temporarily stopped, when back to court she got supervised with a certain agency but refused to pay for her evaluation or to see her son. Back to court she got supervised with her mother, where this abuse took place in the first place.  Before when they had the split she agreed to everything because she didn't want to pay CS, DH just wanted his son so he could have careless about CS. Now that her visits where reduced to basically 4 hours supervised for 1 day a week. She kept up with them for awhile then stopped.  Dec. 25th will be one year she has had no contact with him what so ever. She called after her last visit and said her mom couldn't be there so she couldn't pick him, the next week he was sick (we had a doctors excuse for this) she demanded make up time for her missed time. Court order states there is to be no make up time.  So she decided she just wanted going to bother anymore. So almost one year no contact. She is behind in CS over  7 grand.  The courts are backed up but she the domestic relations officer put in the request for jail time and the judge signed and agreed with it. (This hearing has yet to be scheduled but when it is, she would have had to pay 2/4 of back owed to stay out of jail, as of today she has paid nothing)  My SS has seen many psychologists and psychiatrists for the abuse he went through and both claim there was sexual abuse too, which we knew but couldn't prove.  He is 6.
   The judge seems to keep giving her the benefit of the doubt, even though she was involved with a huge drug mess locally, gone to jail over not paying her fines for charges against her for stealing her grandfathers atm card and using it. She has had many harassment charges filed on her from general people. I have a restrained order against her because of threatening to kill me and my daughter who I was still pregnant with at the time.
   We would like to file with the courts to have her rights removed for abandonment and I would like to adopt him. I have been acting Mom for the past 3 years. I even tried to help BM get her life back on track, She always says she wants to but never does.  At the start we always notified her of his apt with his dr's. even though we didn't have too, she never showed up or asked so we slowly stopped even telling her when they where.  My SS has since acted out sexual situations with another family member, which prompted the psychiatrist to look more into the sexual abuse part and we found out a lot of thing that just made my DH and my hearts break.
   We have a decent attorney but its getting to the point we cant afford to keep going back to court. I want to desperately adopt him.  I have one daughter from my deceased husband and DH and I have one child together.  So with 3 kids its hard to keep passing money over to the attorney when the judge keeps giving her chance after chance.  We don't know if we should just bide our time and let the abandonment time build up, In our state after 6 months of no contact its considered abandonment, It will be 1 year Dec. 25th.

Any advice would be appreciated. Thank you

[4honor]

If so, just file. The child is having problems. I would bet that if BM DID show up at this time that his counseling would all go out the window and he would regress.

Quit paying for attorneys to fight custody and ask for a step parent adoption... chances are she will sign just to stop the CS arrearages.

There is a point in CS after which you feel hopeless and quit trying. I imagine she has reached this place if she has failed to contact her child at all in 9 months.  The action of asking for a step parent adoption will either get her rear in gear (and SS wins) or she will release him (and SS wins).

[FedupMomma]

No child support since Dec 17th of 04.. and that was only for 17.00,
No Contact since Dec 25th of 05..

 I guess we are kind of afraid to rock the boat, she is not a good person her lifestyle is horrible, and with all the abuse we are afraid she will once again come back into his life for 3-4 months destroy everything we have worked to fix, and then walk back out.
 
 We really where not paying our attorneys to fight for custody, she doesn't want custody at all. Basically in the past she wanted visitation on her terms, meaning, if I pick him up for an overnight and there is a party I want to go to, I have full rights to drop him back off and she did not want to pay any child support. She feels that she should not have to support him at all.  She refuses to work lives off the system. Thankfully she does not have any more kids.

  The reason we think the judge keeps giving her chances is because she is young (23). Maybe he thinks she will eventually grow out of this. The child is 6 now, she hasnt changed in 6 years. Not to mention the stuff she did while she was pregnant that we are coping with now with learning disabilities. Even though we have been to 5 different psychiatrists that all say BM should not be in his life at all. One has gone so far as to right up that the child would be better off left to his own devices to raise himself before BM taking care of him even for one day.

  I think what we will do is wait till the end of Dec. to make it a full year and then file for the step parent adoption.  His birthday and various holidays has past already with out so much as even a card.