QUESTION
How hard is it for the grandparents to keep custody of their grandchild when one of the parents want the child?
Asked on Dec 15th, 2020 on Child Custody - Florida
More details to this question:
Father is not on birth certificate and never wanted to be on it. He never lived in the same state as the child. Parents broke up before the child was born. Both parents voluntarily signed temporary custody over to us. Father is not really present and way behind on child support. No consistency when it comes to calling the child not even once a month. Was willing to have us adopt her until recently when his sister got upset with us of us not so willing to let the child fly across the country due to the pandemic. We have messages from the father him following up on the adoption. We have not been served, but just found out that his mother and sister made him file to terminate our custody. We know for a fact it’s the sister since we have text messages stating she will have him do that.
1 ANSWER
Dear Anonymous:
I am sorry you are in this situation. The quick answer is that it is difficult because parental rights trump that of another relative absent extenuating circumstances. You have temporary custody and that is the key word, "temporary". The court will look to the best interest of the child, but unfortnuatenly, Florida has a low bar on parenting. That means that if the father (or mother) is competent to care for the child, the court may well terminate the temporary custody order. This gets quite complicated and you would need to provide a lot more details. Candidly, you would be best served at least having a consultation with an attorney in your area to go through more of the facts. Even then, after 36 years of practice I can never actually predict what a court will do.
Best of luck,
Cindy S. Vova
Law Offices of Cindy S. Vova
954-316-3496/561-962-2785
Answered on Dec 16th, 2020 at 5:32 AM