Neglect of a Minor and Winning Custody

[lordy]

Hi,

I'm hoping to get some insight into how to approach this particular situation. A friend of mine, killed in a car accident 2 years ago left behind his wife and unborn child. The baby girl, now 15 months, is living in a completely broken home. The mother, between the age of 22 and 26 is without job, recently engaged to a jobless drug addict who on numerous occasions has put the mother in hospital from physical abuse. The mother is addicted to coke and whatever else she can get up her nose, alcohol, and has a history of mental disorder in her family. It was always suspected that she is bipolar, as I am bipolar myself it was easy for me, my family and close friends to identify the mother's behavior as the same as mine when I went untreated/undiagnosed. Anyways, the mother is powerless to get a job. She remains in bed all day only getting out of bed to drink/drugs with not just the fiance, but the many other men that visit the house while the fiance is away. In plain site of friends and family. A few weeks ago the mother boasted to her exhusband's (13 year old cousins) about taking shrooms and sniffing coke while pregnant. There is no speculation whether she continues to do drugs when taking care of the baby as she does this while the grandparents are staying with her.

The baby (15 months old) is showing signs of malnourishment and can never stay at the same nursery school for longer than a month due to the mother's behavior when dropping off/picking up from school. The baby is always dropped off with a dirty nappy/nappy rash so that the school has to change the nappy, and not her.

She has now banished her exhusband's family who consists of (divorced): The father's (baby's grandfather)side of the family, the mother's (baby's grandmother) side of the family, and the rest of the friends/ sister in law. The mother has now rejected support from her own parents and prevents anyone from seeing the baby girl.

There are also grandparents of a friend she was staying with who as it turns out have looked after the baby girl for the most part of past the year. They did a great job until the baby was taken away from them a few months ago.

All rants, rage, incoherent babble has been saved via BBM and SMS.

All the grandparents want to know what can be done? Can they take this child away from her mother until we can get the mother sorted out? The main question they are most worried about is if they bring this to the attention of the police does the baby get "lost in the system". Will a judge be happy to grant any of the vast list of family members/grandparents willing to become legal guardian's guardianship or will the child be put into foster care? (aka lost in the system)

What can we do? Fire away with any questions, i'll try my best to answer.

Thanks

*Oh and the straw that broke the camels back which lead to these discussions was the fact that the mother didn't want to fetch the car seat from the grandparents so drove around today with the 15month on her lap.

**Just to add. We want to help the mother as much as we do the baby. Once the baby is being looked after we plan to do whatever we can to get the mother's life back on track. We will not take away her baby and condemn the mother to exile. We want to care for her too.

 

[lordy]

I'll be phoning the various hotlines i've just researched tomorrow. One of the grandmothers did phone and wasn't given particularly good info. She broke down into tears at that point so I didn't ask any more questions. I'll update with what the various hotlines have to say tomorrow.

 

[MyWorld]

Have you contacted child welfare?

If there is family that is willing to look after the child then it should be painless. Just talk it over with them and ask them all the relevant questions and take it from there. I do not have all the details with me, but they will investigate the matter, take custody of the baby and then the grandparents can apply for temporary custody. If they want permanent custody they should just ask the mother to sign over the child to them, otherwise it could take a while through child welfare.

Which area is this?

 

[HavocXphere]

ai dude not sure what to say.

People like that are beyond saving. They need to hit rock bottom and then (maybe) recovering. Do try & get the child away though.

Personally I'd convince the "vast list of family members/grandparents willing to become legal guardian's guardianship" too pool together funds & get a hot shot family lawyer. Without legal backing to support taking the child away your going to be sht out of luck.

Push for a family member taking over rather than (public) foster care though.

If there is family that is willing to look after the child then it should be painless.

Disagree. Biological mothers have a strong claim by default & it would take serious hard evidence to override that.

 

[lordy]

Have you contacted child welfare?

If there is family that is willing to look after the child then it should be painless. Just talk it over with them and ask them all the relevant questions and take it from there. I do not have all the details with me, but they will investigate the matter, take custody of the baby and then the grandparents can apply for temporary custody. If they want permanent custody they should just ask the mother to sign over the child to them, otherwise it could take a while through child welfare.

Which area is this?

Fourways, JHB. This part "but they will investigate the matter, take custody of the baby and then the grandparents can apply for temporary custody." is what I think scares the families the most. But if it's a means to an end, even temporarily, then I'll support it.

ai dude not sure what to say.

People like that are beyond saving. They need to hit rock bottom and then (maybe) recovering. Do try & get the child away though.

Personally I'd convince the "vast list of family members/grandparents willing to become legal guardian's guardianship" too pool together funds & get a hot shot family lawyer. Without legal backing to support taking the child away your going to be sht out of luck.

Yeah, we really want to avoid her hitting rock bottom (she might even be there) and worse have the child around to see this, experience it. The next problem is financial backing. They are busy looking into selling assets to cover this. They all have been paying to look after the mother and child (and mother's abortions, fines etc) so having the money to take care of the child is not an issue on their minds. The legal fee's are a huge upfront cost which none of them can afford. But they're looking into this. Once again during that conversation, the question "what happens if it doesn't work?" came up. Some members said it's probably better to keep it out of court and try and help whenever the mother lets them back in/accepts it. But from past experience that money that's been given has gone up their noses. So discussions stopped where money's concerned until we know more about how the courts work with situations like this.

 

[Drake2007]

shame man. I don't think they should worry about the legal system. The courts' ( and grandparents ) first priority is to act in the best interests of the child, everything after is secondary.

 

[lordy]

shame man. I don't think they should worry about the legal system. The courts' ( and grandparents ) first priority is to act in the best interests of the child, everything after is secondary.

The sad thing is they've all been burnt by the mother and have spent so much money that it is standing in the way of things. For instance, the one family bought a car for the mom, paid 120k up front. The car went missing two months later. So because of this and other related incidents, some of the family members want a lot more info before financially committing to anything. So I'm the guy that's gonna do the info digging. I do have faith though that even if we get told chances are slim I think the families will still contribute regardless of what their stance is now.

 

[lordy]

The other thing I pointed out when I was there today was when I was presented with pictures of the mom and baby etc I said they look really happy. Nothing appeared wrong. Great family shots. Nice clothes, yeah beer bottles and stuff in the background but hey, young mom etc, didn't think too much of it. I even pointed out that the fiance actually looks like a nice guy.

lol. I was told that the 'fiance' in the shot wasn't the fiance, but the third guy to have stayed in the house that week while the actual fiance was away. Not only that, but the clothes and everything had just been bought for them. Apparently if other family members don't buy/contribute bottles/formula/clothes/bedding etc the baby doesn't get anything.

I thought this might be a problem when presenting things to a court if they ask to see pictures or something like that, they'll be surprised to see a happy family where nothing can possibly be wrong.

 

[Drake2007]

They're dealing with an alcoholic / drug addict, she will lie, steal, use emotional blackmail and all the other tricks to get her fix. Getting through to such a person is like banging your head against a brick wall.
My advice, get the child out of that crappy situation asap.

 

[lordy]

They're dealing with an alcoholic / drug addict, she will lie, steal, use emotional blackmail and all the other tricks to get her fix. Getting through to such a person is like banging your head against a brick wall.
My advice, get the child out of that crappy situation asap.

+1.
I'll reply with what the hotlines have to say tomorrow.

Thanks for the advice all.

 

[HavocXphere]

Its gonna be dicey either way, so those wanting a sure thing ("what if it doesn't work") have it all wrong.

Regarding huge up front legal fees. Fine then get a consultation first - just to judge how much of an uphill battle this is going to be, before committing to a full court case thing.

Disagree on the "better to keep it out of court"...this isn't going to go away. You/they need to act or the kid is lost. As I said above you're sht out of luck without the law behind you, so court (/child welfare) is pretty much inevitable imo.

All of the above is guess work though - I still think get a family lawyer & see what he/she says.

 

[Hosehead]

The upper guardian of all children in South Africa is the High Court who are advised by the Offices of the Family Advocate. It's clearly a messy situation here and I'm not going into the nitty gritty of the case laid out. The Family Advocate will need to become involved and has a lot of remedy at his disposal- including, but not limited to ordering Psychiatric assessments on the mother and a complete investigation of the childs current circumstances after which recommendations will be made to the High Court and these are usually accepted and made Orders of Court. The remedy could range to the child being placed in foster care to supervised contact to a change of residency in the best interests of the child with the Grandparents if they are in a position to do so.The mother may qualify for legal aid, but in order to get the ball rolling Social Services need to become involved to make application to the High Court for the Family Advocate's involvement. I'm currently following a very similar case and what I can say is that the resources of the family Advocate are extremely limited and they are very stressed for time. Here in the WC we have 6or7 Family advocates covering the entire province. Gauteng may be similiar in shortage of Advocates.
No high Priced family lawyer will achieve much unless there is private negotiation but since the new childrens act was implemented most of these "family lawyers" are so far behind knowledge of the new legislation it's embarassing to see.

 

[rubytox]

Tough situation. The baby is the real victim and needs to be removed ASAP. If everything you are saying is true and can be proven, then it is worth getting the ball rolling immediately.

Good luck and please keep us posted.

 

[Other Pineapple Smurf]

Fourways, JHB. This part "but they will investigate the matter, take custody of the baby and then the grandparents can apply for temporary custody." is what I think scares the families the most. But if it's a means to an end, even temporarily, then I'll support it.

Friends of ours went through the same situation and the grandparents need to follow the law and the system. They need to get child wellfare involved and stop thinking about their own egos and instead focus on the well being of their grandchild.

In all honesty if they are not prepared to do this then I call them out as trying to use the child as pawn in a game between them and the childs mother.

These friends of mine are still busy in the process of adopting the child and its been a long process for them, but they are getting there. It did require them to move to another town to remove the interference from the mother (their ex daughter in law).