- Jurisdiction
- California
My cousin Lucy, had a daughter named Ann who is about 11 years old right now. When Ann was about 4 months old, my cousin Lucy lost custody of her due to domestic violence and such. My Aunt, who is Ann's great grandmother, went and obtained custody of Ann and has been raising her ever since. Lucy very much only has interest in being an extremely part time parent and is in and out of Ann's life. When Lucy began to manipulate Ann and started making threats to my aunt, my aunt decided to restrict her visitation until she could clean up her act. Lucy began to call threats to my aunt, and consistently called the police and sent them to my aunt's house with false claims. All drama aside, my Aunt is very old, she is well into her mid 90s. And Ann is reaching an age where she is very active and wants to do things (dance, softball, swim, sleepovers) typical childhood activities. My aunt doesn't really allow her to do any of these things because my aunt is old and getting frail and can't commit to taking Ann to all of these extracurriculars. My aunt doesn't allow Ann to go to friends houses because she is afraid Ann's friends will then want to come over to her house. So Ann is very isolated. My aunt does her best, but there is only so much she can do at her age. My aunt is now wanting to move out of town and I worry about Ann being far away and I worry about her starting over in a new town and making new friends that she wont be able to see outside of school. My husband and I talked about wanting to take custody of Ann and care for her with our other children. Could my aunt sign custody over to us? Can my cousin Lucy stop it if my aunt chose to allow us to continue raising Ann? How would we go about doing this? My cousin Lucy has no custody, but I believe has visitation rights. My aunt caring for Ann was supposed to be temporary until Lucy could get on her feet and meet the court's standards to have Ann returned to her. 11 years going on and Lucy hasn't done it. Can I raise Ann? Thank you.
