Ok me and baby's father are not and have never been married, we both live in NC. He is present in my child's life but has a drug addiction. He keeps my son several nights a week but here lately me and my sons father have been arguing a lot. He has threatened to take my son away and not give him back to me. My mom told me that since there is no custody agreement drawn up that he could take my son and until I have some type of custody that he could keep him from me until the custody court date. I want to find a way that he could not take my son from me. He is a great dad all except the drug issues, and I am a great mom who just works a lot. I want us both to have joint custody of him but I don't want him to be able to just run off with him and keep him from me. As far as social services sees it I am the primary caregiver. So what else do I need to do to ensure he doesn't take my son and not return him. We already share him pretty good. He takes him on nights I have to work third shift but I still keep him a majority of the time. I don't want to keep my son away from him because as long as he is wanting to be part of his life, I am open to him keeping him some too. But I just want to make sure he cannot follow through on his threats and me not be able to do anything about it legally.:confused:

I am not sure why you feel it is OK to allow a drug addict (parent or not) to have any substantial contact with much less be in charge of care for your son. But I commend your wanting your sons father to be actively involved in his life.

Unless the father has one of the following you are the only one with any legal rights to your son at this point absent a court order:
1. Affidavit of paternity
2. DNA result affirming paternity
3. Named on birth certificate

If he does have any of these he still has no right to conceal/deny your son. That is technically kidnapping. If this occurs you can contact your local police department with your sons birth certificate and ask them to assist you in obtaining your son from his father. The only difficulty in this is since you have no court order specifying any specific parenting time to one or the other of you it will be hard for the police to enforce. They can accompany you to the fathers house however to obtain your son, as it is their job to maintain the peace and will assist in this. So you would explain that you would like an assist while attempting to "collect" your son from dads house as he is refusing to return him to you and you fear dads actions towards you. They will go to maintain peace. The only thing the police can tell either of you is as long as you are both on the birth certificate you each have equal rights to your son but neither of you can keep the other from the child. With the exception of a "good cause" belief that the child will be in harm with that parent.

If he takes him and make his location unknown then you would need to report as kidnapping to the local police for immediate assistance but would ultimately become a Federal case. I certainly hope you never need this information but hope you find it helpful.

I also wouldn't wait on dad to serve you, go to a lawyer and file on Order to Show Cause for custody and visitation yourself and get your (and your sons) rights protected by a court.

He did sign an affidavit of paternity at the hospital when I had my son. He has a drug problem but does not do the drugs around my son that I am aware of. He is an excellent father, he even taught me how to change diapers as my sons was the first I ever changed. I am just scared that he is going to try to keep him when I go to pick him up from an overnight visit. My mom told me that my dad done the same thing with me and the police told her they could not help her because there was no formal custody agreement.

You can prepare yourself by calling your local police department and let them know the situation and find out what assistance they can offer. But you have to make sure they know that he is refusing to return him or let you see him. Kidnapping especially by parent is treated differently today than before. I had a very similar situation called my local police department, told them what he had threatened and they told me what they would be able to do for me under the law. Which yes they could give a blanket statement of "well he is dad and has equal rights".
So in the event you need to actually utilize the law for protection you would need to then inform them that you would like to exercise your rights, dad is refusing to allow you access to your son and that you are afraid that dad will react physically. That will make it so the police would have an obligation to assist you for the purpose of keeping the peace. Showing up with or the threat of you bringing the police may be enough to make dad hand over your son.

Either way I'd still to go a lawyer first. Temporary custody will be ordered and he will absolutely not be allowed to keep your son from you until permanent custody is decided.

I would definitely get on the phone tomorrow and call a few lawyers as they usually will provide a free consult (even over the phone) because it's possible that you can, in fact file for emergency temporary custody with what is called and ex-parte hearing (based on the fact that you have received threats that the father will take and conceal your son). Ex-parte is an emergency hearing where you file, the other party would need to be notified that day of the hearing and the hearing would be the next day.

At the very least you need to be informed of your rights and options as they apply in your state. The only way to really do this is contact a lawyer and just ask. It doesn't cost anything for that with a lot of lawyers.

I do have to tell you this... if you go into court with the attitude that your sons father being a cocaine addict is okay the Court is very likely to seriously question your judgment as a parent.

I don't think it is OK for him to do cocaine, but I have tried to get him to quit for 2 years now and all I have done is tore my own life apart worrying about what he is doing. Now I come to face the fact that what he does when he does NOT have my child is his own business. I wish he didn't do it and by no means am I approving of it, but there are certain times when you have to give up on changing someone who is not going to change, you know? I just want to get some type of custody order into place so he cannot "kidnap" my little one. Which I think his threats are just idle, but I am just trying to protect myself and my son.

I do understand your position that he is an overall good father, I truly do. I am not condemning you in anyway. And I TOTALLY understand that you can not make a person change. I lived with an alcoholic once. (We have a daughter) But I do feel a bit obligated to let you know that it is affecting the child on an underlying level. And worse, it can get worse. In an effort to support the paternal relationship, and as his mother, you do have the right to ask the Court to require him to submit to a drug test, to ask for a completion of rehabilitation, completion in parenting classes and ask the court to grant supervised visitation until he can prove himself to stay clean and completion of all stipulations. That would show you are in support of a paternal relationship but in a way that is not detrimental to your child and in his best interest. Given the circumstances you would probably be granted all of it.

If you take the father to court, and they find out that he does drugs, they will not be able to understand why you would be okay with sharing joint custody with him, and why you are willing to leave you son with him not being able to know for sure if he does drugs while he's with him. You may seriously want to consider what is best for your son. I'm glad to hear that his father is great with him.. but that does not take away from the fact that he does drugs and may or maynot be doing them while looking after your child.

First you need to understand the differences between parental custody and physical custody and visitation. Physical custody refers to where the child lives. Generally only one parent has physical custody. Parerntal custody refers to who can make decisions about how the child is raised. Usually this is joint custody with both parents making these decisions. Visitation is the rights the non custodial (physical) parent has to spend time with the child.

In your case, you want full physical custody, joint parental custody and supervised visitation for the father. That is what you ask the court for. You may not get all of that (physical custody is most important), but that's what you ask for.

Just want to make a small correction, scott, if I may, the term I believe you are referring to is not parental custody it is legal custody. I wouldn't ask for joint legal though as he is a drug addict. I would ask for sole legal custody at this time.

And it may be difficult in some courts Matt but it is not impossible. It depends on the "proof" you have, any willing family members to testify, friends to testify etc. It can be done. Either way you have the right to ask for it.

I wasn't sure of the exact term for what I was referring to as parental custody. Legal custody does sound better. Thanks for clarifying that.

However, I will disagree with the OP asking for sole legal custody. Apparently the father has been a part of the child's life and, by the OP's account, not a detrimental one. To take away the father's right to have a say in how the child is raised would be wrong and probably not fly with the judge based on the facts as we know them.

Yes the OP need full physical custody so it would be illegal for anyone else to do so. And visitation should be supervised to make sure the father isn't under the influence or doesn't try to take the child.

On the whole I do agree with you, the only reason I made that suggestion is it is not unrealistic that she should be in charge of the decision making at this point because dad is a cocaine addict, and for me at least, that severely affects his sound judgment making capabilities. Because she has allowed it up to this point you may very well be correct Scott. But I do know that here in California it is a valid legal reason for obtaining sole legal custody, and is awarded, until the person can prove they will remain clean. Usually it's about a year here.

That is a sticky situation. Honestly I don't know what to do. I'm guessing though that you should at least seek legal advise, and if you then think you need to take action through the court to determine a custody agreement then go ahead, but it does sound like, other than his threats and drug problem you two sincerely have a good, civil understanding and relationship going that seems as if it would be rather healthy for the child.

But like I said, I just don't know, if I were you I would simply seek legal advise.

Good Luck.

Thanks to everyone who has posted so far! Me and my child's father are getting along a lot better now, and he admitted to me that his threats were idle and he never intended to act on them only to scare me with them. From what I understand he is getting help for his problem and has been clean now a couple of weeks. He is truly a great father and I hope that this was his wakeup call to grow up
Again thanks to everyone for listening and helping when I needed a shoulder.

Can't hurt to get the custody and visitation agreements formalized in court. Even divorced couples have something written and filed to prevent misunderstandings later.

Glad to see things are on the up and up! :]