New member shouting hello!

[Carol]

First of all I hope I am putting this in the right place. I apologize ahead of time if I goofed! :P

I'm in Georgia and we have custody of our granddaughter. Her mother is our daughter.

I guess you could call us one of the "lucky" ones. She signed custody over to us a year ago. Sad, but true. Our granddaughter has always lived with us since she was born. Her mother has too, until she moved out about 18 mos. ago when she got married.

The granddaughter's father is not in her life. He is referred to by us as "the absent sperm donor". :bomb: He's another story, for another day!

Anyway, our daughter met this..ummm...scumbag and against our wishes married him. He doesn't hold a job. He has mental issues. He is an alcoholic.

She was in and out of her daughter's life the whole time she was with him. We got an attorney and got custody of the granddaughter. She signed with no fight and we now have had custody a year this past October.

Finally, our daughter saw the error of her ways and divorced the man the entire family told her to not see (muchless marry) to begin with. She said it took actually living with him and away from us to wake her up.

She's making MUCH better choices and is back home with us with her child (that never left).

It's been a rough ride, but things are looking up. I've had every feeling any and all of you have had. From feeling my life has started over as a caretaker, to wondering where we went wrong raising OUR daughter.

We take one day at a time. Our daughter knows she has no legal rights to her child now, and we make any and all the decisions when it comes to her.

We didn't have to go before a judge. In Georgia if the parent is willing, you can get the paperwork done through an attorney and the judge signs off on it.

Her father (the absent sperm donor) has NEVER supported her, nor did he legitimize her. He has no rights.

He's in the service (reserves) and works for a sheriff dept. in a town near us. We could really rock his world if we wanted to, but no one wants to open THAT can of worms! :grouchomarx:

I'm sure I've left something out, but this is the Reader's Digest version. Hope anyone finished reading the long post. LOL

[Admin]

No goofs, this is the right place for this post :)

Well Carol, I really hope you didn't feel you NEEDED to shout to get our attention, in fact I was aware of your presence since your first attempts* at signing up as a member, And we are glad you made it on after all!

I have to agree that you are one of the luckier ones with your experience in obtaining custody of your granddaughter, and this is not unusual for tweens to need to find things out for themselves, and it isn't the same as being warned of something when they cannot see it, and it isn't that they do not trust in your know how, or experience and wisdom when it comes to such things, but some people just NEED to experience things first hand to UNDERSTAND what it is you tried to communicate, and help her avoid.

Often times these judgments are excluded from logic or reason, because feelings and emotional needs over rule the intellectual aspects of what they likely know better, and sometimes it is just because of those who objected her getting involved with such a guy helped her to rationalize why it would be better than her previous situation living with you, hence the term "live and learn".

In all honesty you are being too hard on yourself.
You should be proud of the job you did raising your daughter, because she has shown she is big enough to admit a mistake, this alone is a great trait, then going beyond that, she is making better decisions, and appreciates what you offer by allowing her to live there again, and hopefully this includes a sincere desire to be with her daughter. May I ask her age?
The reason for the question is to determine how long she will be staying with you, and depending on you for supporting her, along with her daughter, beyond what would be considered appropriate, also does she work?
If she does then she should be at least contributing to her daughter's expenses, even if she has no rights to the little girl, or in the least earning enough to maybe get a degree or certificate to make her more employable and to help her earn a higher wage than those who only have high school to back them up, like maybe a nurse's aid, or medical billing, dental assistant, or whatever she finds she is able to do, and can tolerate doing for 20 to 30 years, so that she can better situate herself and one day have her daughter back.

I am not sure what you mean by the statement "legitimize her" but if he is aware he is the father, and admits this is the case, you can request the state order him to contribute child support, even if he never intends on being involved with her, or your daughter ever again, by doing so, you can possibly invest it in a longterm low risk fund that could develop in to money for her continued education, as well as a back up should some unforeseen large expense come to be, since from most instances, custodial rights does not include her in many businesses health insurance plans,, so she would not have any coverage nor would your daughter if she is over eighteen, unless she continues to attend school and maintains "full time student" status, and even then there could be exclusions.

Since he works for the state or county, there would be little he could do to contest this, and it would not give him any more rights than he has now, in fact you could set up such a stipulation that he contributes child support until she of legal age in your state to be on her own, and it will be garnished from his pay and he will be arrested, should he default at any time, and being in law enforcement would only serve to reinforce these directives from the state.

Does your daughter have any resources to, or intentions of, going out on her own? Alone?
Or does she plan to be dependent on you until the next guy her "urges" give in to, and she wants to be with scrambles her reasoning, or if things at home are not to her liking?
Was there a specific reason she and the father were no longer involved?
Considering his job, it sounds like he could be a good provider, but of course that depends on allot of other factors as well!

Umm yeah about the length of your post...HAVE YOU READ ANYTHING HERE BEFORE BECOMING A MEMBER???? Specifically my posts? LOL:exclaim:

NEVER concern yourself with your post lengths, more information is best, always.

See I have more than passed your post length just welcoming you, and touching upon a few things that popped out to me, imagine if you ASKED a few questions :question::coolwink:

Glad to have you here Carol!

Admin!

*(feel free to email me the specifics of that ordeal so I can look in to why you had such a hard time, and hopefully avoid that experience for others, include, if you still have them, any email responses you received, registration email validation and such, as well as any error messages you got. It would be greatly appreciated)

[Grandma_Bananarama]

Greetings Carol!

I hope you will know in time all the trouble you had becoming a member was worth it. We are happy to hear a situation as positive as yours. Unfortunately, most of us haven't been so lucky.

How old is your granddaughter? As much work as our grandchildren are, they are a blessing to watch grow. I think we have a better appreciation on how fast it all happens the second time around.

I couldn't agree with you more about not opening the can of worms. Sometimes there are things more important than money. Once you get the state involved in having him pay child support, you are obligated to allow him visitation. While children need both parents, the strife and turmoil of adding an adversarial component can be more harmful than having the parent there at all.

It sounds like you are in a good place with your daughter living with you. Have you ever considered gradually working on letting her have custody of her daughter again? I realize that would only happen if she proved she was on the straight and narrow, and put her daughter's interests above her own. But how would you feel about that? I admire any custodial who is selfless enough to relinqish their grandchildren after raising them for a long time.

Well, I don't write as much as Admin, so I'll call it a night. Thank you for taking the time and sharing your situation with us. You have to be doing something so right to have such a peaceful household. I look forward to your input on our sometimes sticky problems that come up on the forum.

[coppertime]

Hi Carol and welcome. Your legal situation with your granddaughter is similar to mine with my grandson. Our daughter-in-law signed over guardianship to me because she had not really raised her son, except for four months after our son died, when she came and got him and took him to another state and promptly signed up for the social security survivor benefits. When she started receiving the $800+ per month, meant for taking care of her son, she saw lots of drug money rolling in and swiftly went down the tubes. We went and got our grandson because he was living in a dangerous situation and she kept on getting the money for another six or seven months. Social Security would only change the custodian with a court order so we just waited until she got arrested again. Her parents offered to pay for her de-tox in exchange for her signing over custody. She ran out on the detox and also her bail so now there is a bench warrent out for her in our state. I filled out the custody papers myself and took them to the court and stipulated that she could regain custody if she ever proved to the court that she could be a fit mother. The judge agreed with me that she should still have the chance to someday redeem herself so that our grandson could at least have one parent. My husband and I are in our 60's and I still feel that she is saveable. My husband disagrees and doesn't care if our grandson ever sees or hears from her again. We didn't try to get child support from her, and our son didn't either, because she never would have paid it anyway and it would have just been more frustration. A few weeks ago she called, the second time in six months, and told her son that she is pregnant. Hopefully she is not still using. Our grandson is now 13 and only lived with her until he was two and then for four months when he was 10. We have no disallusions about him wanting to go to her when he is a few years older. We are bracing for that time and will stall him as long as we can. He still resents us for taking him away from her and she plays up that fact when she talks to him. Hopefully he will be wise enough when that time comes to size up the situation and make the right decisions. I have offered to take him to see her next summer so that we can both check it out. From what I understand she is still living with "friends" and was fired from her last job for stealing. I agree with Grandma that if you can take care of your granddaughter without starting with the child support merry-go-round it will probably be easier. The part that gets me is that the child will, at sometime in their life, try to seek out the missing parent and "make" them love them and excuse them for never being there in all those years. When they get rejected once again by this selfish nobody, their self esteem takes another wallop. All we can do is be there and let them know that we love them.[hr]
Sorry, I didn't sign that last post. Coppertime.

[Grandma_Bananarama]

Your observations about your grandson seeing his mother really rang a bell with me, and I made a connection I had never put together before.

I had raised LM, my grandkids mom, since she was five. I was her third mother by that time. Her bio lost custody to her father at eight months, so LM didn't know her mother. She had this Donna Reed fantasy about her mother that no one could talk her out of. When she turned 14, her mother came back into the picture. The inevitable happened, and the last time they spoke they had gotten into a fist fight.

LM had a ton of emotional problems her whole young life. I worked as hard as I could to get her self image improved and give her a can do attitude. Those all went out the window after her bio did her great exit. It didn't help that her father reminded LM frequently how much she was like her mother. Sadly, that is exactly what she did only four times worse. She wanted to be loved so bad she set out to get pregnant. I prevented pregnancy for another four years by forcing her on a birth control she could not forget to take. If I hadn't, the oldest grandson I have would be 15 now.

I agree with Copper: these kids just need to know their other parent. The why didn't you want me is so strong they are compelled into this self destructive spiral. I know I will be here after she personally gives them a demonstration of why they were taken in the first place. It's all any of us can do. We are at a disadvantage because, hard as we may try, we really aren't their mothers. For now I'll enjoy them when they're younger and let them shower me with all the love they are willing to give me. In the end, that's all they want is to be loved.