My daughter died a few weeks ago in a terrible wreck. The kids, age 12 and 10, have not seen their father in over 7 years. So he said I the grandmother, who has seen them as much as I can, whu=ich is a lot, but the father said he would sign what ever he needs to sign for me to be able to raise them. Do I need custody or guardianship? I do not have the money to hire a lawyer and need to know if there is a paper he can sign and I can record in the court. The kids live in New MExico, I live in Texas and father lives in Michigan.

He can't sign his rights over to you unless you agree to adopt. However, he should be able to give you guardianship.

A guardianship is what you need. In fact, this what guardianships are ideally for. The dad can sign a consent to the guardianship and that will make things easy.

The tricky part is where to file. New Mexico technically has jurisdiction but if the kids came and lived with you you could probably file in Texas-- if the kids have no one taking care of them in New Mexico, Texas certainly could assert temporary emergency jurisdiction and eventually get jurisdiction by virtue of the kids being with you.

It should be pretty straightforward.