Legal Question in Family Law in California

Re: Need help on child-custody/guardianship tricky situation

I don't think what you are looking to do will work, tactically. You want a guardianship for 3 kids, and would like to be the guardians of the oldest kid, so apparently you think other relatives could be guardians of the other kids, because you want to keep the suspected abuse "quiet," and avoid foster care for the children.

The basis for the guardianship you propose has to be stated and proved against the parents, or no guardianship. So you can't "try to keep it quiet" and still succeed. You have to lay out what you think is happening and prove it, or no guardianship. So this necessarily brings into play the prospect that the Dept of Child Protective Services will get involved, and if a case is consequently opened in Dependency Court, the prospect of foster care. Even if CPS or criminal authorities don't get involved, there is a preference for keeping the children together. It certainly happens that kids get split up, but it's not the preference. So I think you need to suggest to the court a solution for all three children and be able to demonstrate why that is the best scenario. So if you can only take one, who is going to join in your request to take care of the other two? If there is abuse against even just the oldest, all three must be taken from their care.

There is no easy way to do this, there is no quiet way to do this, there is no way to control the consquences of the allegations you want to make. If you believe these children are suffering, you either throw yourself into it in requesting the guardianship, which will have the obvious consequences with your daughter and son-in-law, or you can keep in quiet as to yourselves by reporting them to CPS, which will keep confidential who reported the abuse, and they'll investigate. If they determine abuse and proceedings are commenced, you can appear in those proceedings and seek your proposed guardianship, and you might be successful.

The only other way to do this is with the parents' consent to the guardianship.

Lastly, you can email me privately the names of the attorneys you already consulted and I'll give you a couple more names you can consult if you like.