Legal Question in Family Law in Massachusetts

Re: Getting soul custody

You should obtain an attorney's assistance to protect your rights.

You must be unfit before your kids can be taken from you against your will. This assumes that you are in pretty bad shape, and that you are an active threat of harm or neglect to your children.

A good statement of the law:

As the critical inquiry, a determination of current parental unfitness is not focused upon "whether the parent is a good one, let alone an ideal one; rather, the inquiry is whether the parent is so bad as to place the child at serious risk of peril from abuse, neglect, or other activity harmful to the child." Care & Protection of Bruce, 44 Mass. App. Ct. 758, 761 (1998). "Parental unfitness . . . means more than ineptitude, handicap, character flaw, conviction of a crime, unusual life style, or inability to do as good a job as the child's foster parent. Rather, the idea of `parental unfitness' means `grievous shortcomings or handicaps' that put the child's welfare much at hazard. (Footnotes omitted.) Adoption of Katharine, 42 Mass. App. Ct. 25, 28 (1997), quoting [from] Petition of the New England Home for Little Wanderers to Dispense with Consent to Adoption, 367 Mass. 631, 646 (1975)." Adoption of Greta, 431 Mass. 577, 587 (2000).

Adoption of Leland, 65 Mass.App.Ct. 580, 583-584 (2006)