I am writing a story where the main character is a little boy whose father is dead and whose mother is serving a life sentence in prison without parole. He is placed with his grandparents (his mother’s parents) when his mother is imprisoned (his father has been dead since before he was born), but they are emotionally and physically abusive to him. When his aunt (his mother’s sister) discovers that he is being abused, she decides she wants to take care of him instead.
Given the following facts…
–She is only 21
–She is unmarried
–Moreover, she is a lesbian, in a relationship with a woman who she lives with, and her best friend, a gay man, lives with them as well, with his boyfriend.
…would she be likely to be able to get custody of him? Is there some sort of provision for “moral turpitude” or whatever, that would override the advantage she would have because she is a blood relative of his?
Also, would being in prison for multiple murder automatically cancel the boy’s biological mother’s parental rights, or would she be able to force whoever is caring for him to bring him to visit her?
I’m sure the laws and practices of one jurisdiction will vary from the next. Also, we don’t really have enough of the story to answer your questions definitively, I feel.
As far as “custody” goes, I think the kid’s aunt doesn’t have much of a shot unless there is some pretty serious evidence of physical abuse. So, at least in my jurisdiction, the aunt or the kid’s school or whoever would be alerting the welfare authorities (who presumably placed the child with the grandparents in the first place) to the abuse and imploring them to remove the child from the grandparents. The aunt would put her hand up to be the child’s carer. If a decision was made to remove the child from the grandparents, an assessment of the aunt would be made by the welfare department - criminal record check, visit to her home, interviews with and background checks on other members of her household, etc. If the aunt scrubbed up alright, she might have a shot at having the welfare department place the child with her.
As for the mother getting visits in prison, the court could order this. Whether or not it did so would depend on a whole lot of things you haven’t told us about including the state of the mother’s relationship with the child, her personal history, what she is in prison for, the practicality of visits (whether the prison is anywhere near the grandparents’ house and whether it is feasible for anybody to take the child to and from the prison), whether the prison has the facilities to provide meaningful time between the mother and the child and potentially (depending on his age/level of maturity) the child’s wishes. A judge would have to weigh up all the facts and make a discretionary decision based on the child’s best interests. Given that cases like these are uncommon and no two cases are exactly the same in any event, there is no yardstick as such and nobody could give you a definitive “yes” or “no” here about whether the mother would be able to get the court to order that there be visits. In my jurisdiction, she would get legal aid to pay for representation and then go for it. Of course, she has nothing to lose by trying for it.
Okay…I will try to provide more. First of all, this takes place in California.
What constitutes ‘serious evidence’ in your experience? Photographs of the bruises/marks? Audio recordings of the grandparents yelling at the child and calling him names/smacking him around?
The late father was an only child, and the aunt is essentially an only child now too (One of her siblings is dead, the other is the imprisioned bio-mom) so there are no other aunts and uncles. There are also no great-aunts or uncles living. And the paternal grandparents don’t want the boy, and, believe me, would be a thousand times worse than the maternal grandparents…
The mother “loves” the child (as in, she was enjoying psychologically and physically torturing him with an eye toward making him into her perfect future accomplice) and would want to continue to influence him. She is in prison for committing 5 murders (okay, technically, she was convicted for the two there was the most evidence for, but she really killed five people, including the boy’s father and the boy’s other aunt…as in, her own identical twin sister.) The prison’s about an hour away from where the boy lives now and about two hours away from where he would live if he lived with his aunt. He doesn’t really want to see his mother, but he is very afraid of her and would never say so for fear that she would find a way to hurt him.
I am happy to have a real expert answering my questions. Thank you.
OK, the mother has no hope in hell of getting visits.
Re the grandparents having the child taken off them, I think it is a question of the quality of evidence that they are actually abusing the child and the nature and frequency of the abuse. They aren’t going to have him taken away because, on one occasion, grandpa gave him a smack on the bum after junior told him to “fuck off”. If they are pounding on him nightly with the crowbar because he doesn’t eat his peas, he gets removed. In between those extremes, it is a question of degree and weighing up all the circumstances.
I’d have major concerns about the aunt having him. My questions would be how long she had known about the abuse and done nothing? It would concern me that she had been brought up in the same home as her sister with parents who were abusive. Her sister is abusive. I’d be REAL leery about recommending her for licensure. I would have a lot of questions for her in the home visits.
Her sexual preference wouldn’t be a concern at all.
According to the website I found, the same training required to be a foster parent in California is not required for Kinship Care. But, there is no way I would recommend her for licensure without a parenting class or two or three. From a GOOGLE it looks like many of the colleges in California offer classes to those doing Kinship Care.
I am a Foster Care Licensing Specialist who recommends to the State that someone be licensed. I also do the training they need for state guidelines.
Oh, I meant to tell you that in my state, you must be 21 to be a foster parent. I didn’t search long enough to find out about California’s requirement. Even though it wouldn’t matter since she would not have to be licensed. Just so you know she would get a monthly stipend for his care.
How long has she thought he was phyically and emotionally abused and not call DSS? That reminds me. If you mention Social Services in your book which I am sure you will. Figure out what county it takes place in. It looks like each county in California has a different name for their agency.
Good That should really piss her off and be good plot fodder.
She really didn’t have any idea. She doesn’t like her parents much, and she’s away at college so she doesn’t come to visit very much. Her parents had only had the boy for a few months and she’d seen him once before, but her parents were putting on the fakey nice-nice show then. The second time she goes to see him, she brings her best friend, Julian, who was also Paul’s (the boy’s late father’s) best friend while he was alive. (Julian had never been to see him before because he had some psychological aversion to it, seeing as Linneah, the boy’s bio-mom, had attempted to kill him, and killed Paul in front of him, so the whole situation had some bad vibes for him.) On this occasion, they babysit for the boy briefly and have occasion to give him a bath, and thereby see that he is covered in bruises. When the grandparents come home and SaraLyn (the aunt) confronts them, that’s when the emotional abuse comes to the fore (“You little shit! You know you deserved it! Little demon seed, you came from garbage and you’ll be garbage!” etc.)
That shouldn’t be a problem.
Also, would it help that SaraLyn’s girlfriend is older (26), has a well-paying job (paralegal) and has experience childrearing (she had a toddler-aged son and infant daughter, but they and her former husband died in a car accident several years before.) Just to assuage any problems of “you’re too young/you won’t know how to take care of him” sort of thing?
I am sorry for not including all this detail before…I was trying not to write the longest post ever, but maybe I should have.
Hee. Nope, it’s not. It’s the sequel to a previous book (where all the murders/background happened) and this is the “uplifting” half of the story, so it gets better later. But everyone’s got a long road to travel to heal from this sort of background…
I’m confused? Is this fact, or fiction? If fiction, you probably have much more lattitude, as you only have to make it sound plausible: i.e., the paralegal GF could intervene in the court proceedings, or have a lawyer friend that acts for the sister. If it’s a true story, or even fiction, based on fact, then you have some serious homework to do.
I know nothing about the facts, but have a plausibility question. If the aunt was raised by the same parents as the mom, it seems like either 1) she will suspect abuse from the get-go, since that’s the way the grandparents roll or 2) there would have to be some major disconnect for the grandparents to abuse the boy, but to have been fairly normal parents to the aunt. You don’t need to write me your book, but thought I’d mention it.
That’s a good question, actually, since I didn’t explain that part of it to you.
The grandparents were very subtly mentally abusive to the three sisters as they grew up (mostly via cutting down all their aspirations and dreams, making them feel like they couldn’t ever succeed). The crossover to physical abuse is basically due to them taking out their rage at being “embarrassed” by the criminal behavior of their daughter on Adrian (the boy). They are a very upper-middle-class “keeping up appearences” type of family, and the shame of having a murderer for a daughter, especially in the tiny town of 550 people they live in, has made them very eager to punish little Adrian for the sins of his mother.
That’s a good idea, and would be very much in character for the story. She would certainly have had therapy to deal with having a murderer for a sister, and with having their other sister killed by Linneah the murderous one, so she would probably talk about her upbringing there too.
