As you are fundraising, its going to take a bit to reach your goal, (i will go give what i can in a minute) contact the court house in the county the boy is in and ask if they have a self help legal clinic.
If they do, go in there and get free help.
They will not go to court for you or with you. But what they will do is help you with all the proper filings.
Your next course of action is to ask both bio parents to let your DIL be his guardian.
Your next course is to open the phone book and start looking for an attorney that will represent your DIL pro bono.
Next
Various bar associations and
legal aid organizations offer
legal clinics as a way to provide free
legal advice and handle intake for any
pro bono or volunteer
lawyer programs they operate. If you qualify, you can talk with a
lawyer at a
legal clinic for free. Some
legal clinics are only for people with low-incomes.
https://texaslawhelp.org › article › p...
Good luck with getting help from the courthouse yourself. Ive always been told they legally can not provide me literally ANY information whatsoever. They couldnt tell me what form(s) i might need, how to file said form or who to file it to, how to get a certain resource, who i should be talking to instead of them(even if it was another govt entity), nothing. There were situations where I already knew that i needed something(like a certain form/type of paperwork), already knew WHAT i needed and why and everything else, but i just wasnt sure how to get it or who to send it to. The knowledge of what it was and all the legalese and reasoning behind it was already something i personally had, they were providing nothing along those lines. It was simply a, "go to this office to get this" or "take this to this office after you fill it out all on your own without our help" that i was after, and they could not tell me even that.
Hopefully others had less restrictive/more helpful county clerks and courthouses and whatnot, but my experience is you are 100% absolutely positively on your own with literally every single aspect no matter how seemingly minute or insignificant. Get good at searching shit on the internet or pay up for a professional, cuz the legal world is pitch black otherwise, completely pitch black.
But yeah if either parent still has rights, CPS will take their word damn near as the fucking law. CPS bends over backwards to that extent for the scumbags they serve. If the trash parents vouch and say they want their kid with you, that will got a LONG way, may even be enough all on its own(long as you pass a homestudy) to get you temp placement. It may not even require a lawyer helping you get your foot rammed thru the door to get a temp placement if the parent is cooperating with CPS and tells them, "i want my kid placed with so and so".
Be careful though, cuz if they already are at the point where CPS is ready to recommend termination, and the scumbag parent starts talkin you up, it could send the message that you are too close or too friendly with the scumbag, one of those "you can judge a boy by his friends, and all of mine are trash" type of deals. Worries about whether you are inclined to bring them around the kid may arise. Just be sure to make clear any time you communicate with the State that you wish to provide stability/safety and would never permit the scumbag bio's anywhere near the kid ever again.
You most def have to "game" the system a little bit when it comes to how you communicate, can't be TOO critical/negative certainly not on a personal level, can't be too wishy washy or nice in the other extreme either. Really gotta control your thoughts/communications so as to tell the courts and CPS what sounds best given the specifics of the current situation, at its specific point in time. I've known people who failed a home study cuz their relationship with the abusive, neglectful parent(who still had rights though, so theyre CPS's crown jewel still) was TOO contentious. The belief was that it could lead to potential disruptions or even harm if the child was placed with someone who was at such extreme odds and had such difficulties with the bio. Again, perfect loving stable home, nothing wrong with it whatsoever, EXCEPT the person made known how lowly they thought of the scum that hurt the kid.
I must warn you, the attorney will gobble thru that in at breakneck speed. I doubt it will even get you a court date. But if it does he or she will demand more money before you get to court. This first $3,000 is all things you can accomplish on your own. Then when you actually get a court date, then immediately hire an attorney.
If you run into this problem, that attorney you hired is a scheister piece of shit and you need to leave endless negative reviews everywhere you can find to leave them to run em into the mud. That's pretty outrageous. Def do your research before hiring one to find out exactly what they do, are they highly rated, even pose the question to find out EXACTLY what the retainer covers to make sure you dont get screwed over like this.
You arent hiring an attorney solely for some advice. You are hiring an attorney to help you get custody of the kid. The retainer should cover everything required. Find out the entire strategy and what the plan is before handing the dollars over.
BTW, if the CPS case is still ongoing, it won't be possible to get a separate court date/appearance for you. ANd even if they did get something separate, it would be pointless, cuz no Judge is going to do anything if the state already has some active involvement going on with the kid/bio parent. Anything that happens will have to be decided by CPS/family court judge currently involved and will happen during the regular/ongoing family court hearings(dont know how your state does em, but where i've been these were usually monthly, scheduled hearings for ongoing CPS precedings in the county). Keep in mind, this is the State vs the parents at this point, anyone else involved is on the sideline and while you can def do some good getting facetime with the judge and making yuoruself look good for when/if placement and/or termination time comes, you are just a tertiary afterthought if that at this point. Nobody gives a shit about you, not yet, it is between the State and the parents, with the goal being to help the parents every single way possible.
The attorney will need to file some shit to get you added into the mix as an interested party/interceder on the kids behalf in the ongoing CPS case with the state. Not sure how the law works with a non-relative though, def one of the many reasons a lawyer unfortunately is a necessity. UNLESS rights have already been terminated, then you can ignore much of the above. There's other shit of course if CPS is no longer in the picture.
Attorneys charge hundreds of dollars an hour and they dont bill your file 15 minutes at a time.
With my family court shit, attorneys had a lump charge where they sorta estimated the likely hours the case would require and gave me a total to pay from the start. Def expect anywhere from 3 to 6 grand usually, although of course there's some prob chargin less and some more. That money covered the whole shibang. If an attorney halfway through or really at any point before the case is settled tries to hit you up for more money, that's a mighty shitbag scheister attorney.
A phone call or meeting when we had a question about something did not equate to extra money owed. Some of the cases lasting 9 or 10 months did not entail extra money owed. Again, that initial retainer paid should cover it all, if you have an honest, decent lawyer.
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he needs you guys!!! xoxo
