QUESTION
I am trying to find out about getting guardianship of my 3 younger sibilings. My mom is willing but my step-dad (their father) is not.
Asked on Nov 16th, 2011 on Child Custody - Minnesota
More details to this question:
I am a 30 year old married mother of 3 in Minnesota and my mom is a hot mess. She is going back into treatment for alcohol and depression for the second time. Her home was foreclosed on and they have to be out on Monday. She has 3 kids and lives with her boyfriend of 18+ years. He is a terrible father. He is mentally and physically abusive to my mom and he scares the kids. My mom will let me take the kids but he won''t. He thinks he is going to find a place in 4 days where they can move to and keep them but we all know that isn''t going to happen. And even if it did, he would never be home because he likes to go out and cheat on my mom and party with his friends. I have spoken with the 2 older kids and they want to come with me, they know their dad is not being the parent he should be. Do I have any rights to take the kids and where do I start? I don''t want them to have no where to go on Monday.
1 ANSWER
William/J Joanis
It is going to be very difficult to solve this problem by Monday through having you obtaining some rights and asserting them. The first question is whether the father has any rights. Is he on the birth certificate? Did he sign a recognition of parentage? Did he go to court to assert his rights? If so, for which of the kids?. How old are the kids? If he did have some custody rights, is his parenting so bad as to have them extinguished? The fact that he is the biological father gives him the right to pay child support and otherwise to go to court to establish additional rights. You may be making assumptions as to his rights, that may or may not be accurate. If you want, we don't charge for the initial meeting and my partner, Stacey, is especially good on these cases. Plus, we don't charge anything for our initial meeting and advice. Did I mention we validate for parking?
Answered on Nov 17th, 2011 at 12:25 PM