Thanks everyone!
Some more details I got: She has 3 kids. Currently have a home, but it’s being repossessed, and she’ll only be able to rent a 2-bedroom appt.
Her ex also does not want his parents to take custody of the kids. The grandparents apparently already employ three lawyers, whereas the couple has none.
I think I’ll advice her to seek any legal help she may get. Doesn’t law firms support needed People’s case Pro Bono?
Weirder things do happen - here in Virginia, a woman lost custody of her son, to her own mother, because she (the boy’s mother) is lesbian.
1 room per kid, though? A non-starter. When my brother and sister-in-law adopted a little girl (3ish years old), they already had 3 kids. 2 boys shared a bedroom. The new child’s room was quite small. My brother commented that the social services people actually told them they could have legally housed TWO kids in that small room. The minimum is something like 64 square feet per child (or maybe even less, I don’t know the exact figures).
I live in a community with a large ultra-orthodox Jewish population. Most of the homes are about the same size as mine (3 bedrooms). Considering the size of their families, there’s no way a kid could have his own room . . . even if the attic and part of the basement are converted to bedrooms.
Foster children aren’t usually allowed to share a bedroom with another child of the opposite sex. From what I’m told the local social service agencies prefer that all of the foster children in a given household be of the same sex (unless they’re siblings). One of the factors in assigning public housing is that a family should have enough bedrooms so that; children do not have to share a bedroom with the opposite sex (even their own siblings), and that a child (other than a baby) shouldn’t be sharing a room with an adult.
If they’re closely related enough so that they can’t marry (which obviously includes a brother and sister) they don’t need to be seperated, even in sleeping accomodations. That said I’m pretty sure most Orthodox & Hasidic families would only make brothers & sisters share the same bedroom as a last resort.
I certainly hope not. I have multiple rooms that don’t have any kids in them.
Years ago, Hubster and I took classes to become foster parents. We never got organized to actually acquire the kids, regretfully.
However, I do remember some of the rules and regs we were given. 2 kids max per room, same sex only. The instructor admitted this causes difficulty, especially when a teen foster kid gives birth and keeps her child. If she has a little boy, the baby MUST sleep in another room.
~VOW
I have made a note about this in your file. You’ll find out why soon.
Great–now the Federal Bureau of Child Placement is going to assign me a whole mess of orphaned rugrats, isn’t it?
There is no law that says you have to have a room for any kids period (foster kids and adoption aside). They can literally sleep on the couch or a matress on the floor as long as it’s livable. It may make a difference when choosing between that and a parent with a house, but it’s not grounds to take kids away from their parents and give to someone else.
As far as grandparents go, as others have noted, they really have no right to ask for the kids. Except in special circumstances such as death, prison, neglect, abuse etc, custody is between two parents and judges often don’t care much for people sticking their nose in the parent’s business this way.
They absolutely need an attorney. A good lawyer may be able to get the grandparent’s case dismissed right off the bat, whereas not having one might mean they spend a lot of time worrying about fighting it. They may also request a Guardian ad Litum to act on behalf of the children.
One bit of advice; even with kids, possession is 9/10ths of the law. I wouldn’t let the kids go to the grandparent’s until this is all over or else they could file for emergency custody to keep them and it might just work. Or if they spend a lot of time there, the grandparents house starts to look a little more like a home to the kids. Going to court and asking for the kids to be taken from the home they’re happily living in and be sent somewhere they haven’t been to in months is a much more uphill battle for the grandparents than going to court and saying “we’re practically raising them already, look at all these photos.”
You make it sound like it just happened last week. Actually that happened 20 years ago, and, at the time, homosexual sex was a crime in Virginia. Not just a crime; a felony.
Since Lawrence v. Texas, a 2003 case, private consensual sexual conduct cannot be criminalized.
I’m fairly sure that, here in the regressive and homophobic state of Tennessee, a lesbian couple has lost custody of one partner’s birth child(ren) for just that reason. I’ll try to dig up a cite.
Just thinking that.
Is the couple in the US or Israel?
Israel: Good friggin luck.
US: The grandparents can’t do much, and the bet din will try to interfere as much as they can concerning the divorce agreement, but she doesn’t have to agree to it. They’ll emotionally blackmail her if they agree with the grandparents, though.
In post #21, the OP mentions that there are 3 children involved, but I don’t see any information about their ages or genders. And I personally don’t think it is a good idea for a 15-year-old boy to share a bedroom with his 14-year-old sister.
On the other hand, if there are 3 kids, then two rooms ought to be enough to keep the genders apart. I think there is a miscommunication somewhere.
I know a lesbian who got pregnant via rape. The rapist’s family threatened to sue for custody, claiming “If a lesbian can be a good mother, a rapist can be a good father.”:eek:
She told them to bring it on, and they backed off. Would have been a helluva trial.
Whaaa?! That’s seriously messed up!
If you’re thinking of Lisa Miller (the only recent/notorious case with a Tennesee connection that I can find), she was initially granted custody of her daughter, but her Civil-Unioned-in-Vermont lesbian ex-partner was identified as having parental rights and granted visitation. Miller, who had become a Born Again Baptist refused to comply with the court’s visitation order. After a fairly long period of blocking visitation, the Vermont family court took custody away from Miller, the Christian heterosexual natural mother, and granted it to the lesbian ex-parter. Then, with the aid of a Tennesee pastor, Miller kidnapped the child and left the country.
So unless you’ve got something else, this case hardly stands for the proposition that you can lose custody “just by being gay.”
A) Miller wasn’t gay when she lost custody.
B) Custody was granted to the openly gay ex-partner.
C) Custody was taken away from Miller because she blatantly ignored the visitation rights of the non-custodial parent, not because of her sexual preferences.
True - and I had thought it was somewhat more recent than 1993. Still “somewhat” relevant in that it illustrates that sometimes a court will do some completely insane stuff :(.
This is off-topic, but I wonder how often anyone was actually prosecuted (in the 1950s or later) under that former law.
OK, OP here.
The story became so messed up, that I now believe wasn’t true to begin with.
She doesn’t give any more details.
She claims her in-laws are reading the Israeli forum (anonymous, in Israel, in Hebrew, whereas they are in the states).
And, to top it all, she stated that the alleged legal aim, who has 30 years of experience, advised her to escape to Israel…
So, I now assume she was simply trolling.
Sorry to have bothered you all.