My grandson has lived with me and Grandpa since he was born. My son, the child's father has had past issues and chooses to allow us to raise the baby.(drugs alcohol trying to get his life together) The baby( he is almost 4now) mother is not my child and lives in another county. She has not once in the last 3 years so much as asked after the baby or seen him. She is in college and the state pays her bills because she was a foster child. All of a sudden out of the blue the baby's mother called to tell us she was ready to be a mom and would be coming to pick him up and take him away just before Thanksgiving. We had a verbal agreement before the baby was even born that WE would raise him with open door policy for visits. My son visits and calls several times a week the baby's mother has never even asked about the baby when contacted via FaceBook or email. Hi How are you do you know how to fix my computer? Hi how are you I got an A on my test but never ever once how is Baby? We, my husband I have barely enough income to pay our bills and some months we must decide what has to be paid and what we can not have. In other words we are broke and can not afford a lawyer but are terrified. Any ideas?

First you need legal guardianship of the child by court order. File right away as an exparte motion. Next be sure to request child support. Both parents should be helping you out. After you receive guardianship then later proceed to adoption if that is an option. The child is not a throw away item nor has it survived these past few years on the mother not being ready to be a parent. You need to do something now as the mother is a stranger to the child. It would tear that child apart to leave you.

Do you have ANY legal standing to be caring for this child? Without that you are going to have a problem here. You can refuse to turn the child over to the mother, but if she goes to court, it is likely she will win.

An alternative you have for legal advice would be a local law school that might run a clinic.

No we do not what we have is notarized statements from both parents asking us to care for the child. We DO NOT want to cut his parents out but this is our baby, we raised him from newborn to date!

We are going to court Monday to file. We are worried about DCF worker thinks mom is ready although she lives off the state(rent food and all as long as she is in school) we did not go after support cause neither parent has the means to pay so

I also must add Florida no child support= no medicaid, food stamps etc We did not file for support because neither parent could afford to pay it and CS would put them in jail for non compliance but without filing it we can not get any benefits to

In Northern Illinois, lawyers are connected with a legal service that offers pro bono (free) help to people who qualify. Check at your local library's reference department to find out if there is something like that in your area.

Please post as this situation moves along. We'd like to know what happens.

Please post in the Answer box. You'll get lots of room to respond. The Comment box is very limited.

First, please don't use the Comments for follow-up, use the Answer options instead.

Second, the notarized statements have no legal standing without a court ratifying them. Any agreements made in those documents or verbally will be ignored by the court.

Frankly, I don't hold out much hope for you. I gather the parents were very young at the time of birth. And the mother's immaturity at the time is going to make her claim to be ready now all the more acceptable to the court. The court may order a transition period where the mother makes visits increasing to overnights, finally complete switchover. You should push for this instead of a cut over. You also need to be VERY careful about negativity towards the mother. Doing so may affect your ability to be a part of the child's life in the future. Your sole focus should be that you are the only parents the child has ever known, and changing that would have a negative affect on the child.

Sadly, this is a question that should have been addressed a couple of years ago, when something could have been done legally to give you some type of standing in the proceeding. As it stands now, the strongest position I see for you is as agents of the father. It is his rights that have the potential to trump her rights in a custody hearing.

Follow me on this, mother and father essentially abandon the child, but father places child in temporary care of his parents, in effect retaining custody and provideing defacto for the best interests of the child (similar to parent that places child in bording school).

So, father (if he can get his **** together) should go to court and push his legal rights. I am leery to involve child services, but if they are not involved they might be your best bet for limiting your legal expenses and getting some state support.

Now, on to the child support issue... and I am going to be hard on you here... what you did by chosing to let both of them off the hook because they might go to jail for non payment... was enable them to continue with bad behavior... If your son had to spend a few weeks in the county jail maybe that would be the kick in the *** he needs to get off the drus and elcohol and get a job and be a father! Same for her, college is great but she had a responsibility she was 50% at fault for (sorry fault is a tough word in regards to a child) but still...