If you're in court for child support and the mother doesnt show up and you request full custody, can you take your child home that day?

I think that CPS with take the children seeing neither are fit parents.

Are you willing to take care of a living, breathing human being? This isn’t a game as to who wins the child, but what is right for the child. The courts will decide this.

It depends on a whole lot of things:

- what state this is in?
– the judge’s decision
– recommendation from the Department of Family Services (or whatever it is in your state)
– whether in the judge’s estimation you and the boyfriend are equipped to care for the child
– and so on and so forth

So it’s possible, but – again -depending on the baby’s current custodial arrangements – not a sure thing.

I hope that your boyfriend has a good lawyer.

Mom is on drugs, Dad has a record, no job, and lives with his underage girlfriend’s parents.

Doesn’t look too promising for either of them. Especially the kid.

The child is with a grandparent; for most courts given the lack of fitness of either parent, that is probably best for the child. There are no such things as “default” judgments in custody decisions, what is best for the child is paramount.

The mother showing up or not, the mother being fit or not, the father still needs to pay child support!

It may be to the grandmother, but he still has to pay. It has nothing to do with the mother’s drug use or fitness or custody, he still has to pay. And he should pay before he buys expensive shoes for his girlfriend.

If I’ve got this right, the child currently is in official custody of the (unemployed) mother, who lives with a boyfriend, and both of them have drug and alcohol abuse issues, including an arrest for the mother (and no noted documentation of the boyfriend’s issues). The boyfriend’s employment should not be an issue, but it’s noted that he is also unemployed. The child lives with its maternal grandmother, and the father has not been paying full child support payments, which has led to the court hearing on that topic.

I don’t know where people are getting the idea that the father, your boyfriend, has a record (unless that’s from an earlier question that I haven’t seen), but it would seem completely reasonable that he should request the drug test for the custodial parent, and that he should seek custody – good luck to him. He can’t just interrupt the judge’s docket with an accusation or request, however. If the hearing has already been scheduled to consider his lack of support payments, then that’s what the judge is going to want to know about first of all.

Once that matter is heard, then he can make his request / accusation. Unless he has had a history of having the child stay with him in unsupervised visitation, I can’t even imagine a court overturning the custody arrangements summarily, especially since a drug test – even if administered on the spot – would probably take time to analyze and be entered into the record. If he has had unsupervised overnight visitation with the child (he’s not considered to be a danger, in other words, and his home environment with you is documented in some way as being acceptable to the court), then he may be awarded temporary custody pending the outcome of the additional hearing. Maybe. (On the other hand, if the child is living with grandmother in a good environment and not subject to the mother’s and boyfriend’s problems, then I doubt if any change would be made – unless the grandmother supports that request.)

I expect that if grandmother shows up for the hearing then the judge will start the procedings by considering the support payment issue that is currently on the agenda and take the motion to consider the mother’s fitness to retain custody. Unless your boyfriend brings documentation or other proof to court that the child is at imminent risk, the judge will not make any hasty decisions on custody. I would expect that if he’s competent and Child and Family Services is on the ball, that he’ll order an investigation into the mother’s and child’s living arrangements and consider further motions on custody later on, when he receives a report from a CFS agent.

Your boyfriend should have an attorney. It would also be helpful if he has a good relationship with the grandmother (and the child, obviously!) and can get her to advocate for him. That’s his best chance. It’s unlikely in the extreme that he will be able to swing all of this by himself.

If a drug test is required for the mother than your boyfriend should be ready and willing to pass one himself.

Every time this question shows up in my activity I’m tempted to shake the computer and scream “HE’S NOT A PRIZE, HE’S A BABY!”

Seriously. They don’t just pass out kids willy-nilly. “Oh, sorry, Mom, we were going to let you be the responsible parent, but you were ten minutes late, so we decided to give him to that homeless guy instead. He got here on time.”

Seek, I thought you were talking about the father there for a minute, not being a prize catch, but an immature child. Reminds me if a good quote, ‘Only the crazy women like the broken ones.’