Legal Question in Family Law in Ohio

Mother Abandons Child, now what?

I am the paternal Grandmother of a 7 yr. old boy whom his mother dropped off back in March of this year. She was homeless at the time.He has been with me every since. She has visited him from time to time, but never has been cosistant with her visitation schedule. I went to court and got temp. custody which was to end when school was out. At this time school has been out for a week and she has made no attempt to get him back or even phone.(She had an apt. for about a month, but now we can't find her.) You might also need to know that, she has missed 12 scheduled visits with no contact to us concerning this matter. Where do we go from here?


Asked on 6/09/99, 7:29 am

1 Answer from Attorneys
Jonathan Schiff Self employed

Re: Mother Abandons Child

That depends on what you want to do. If you got temporary custody, my guess is you have custody until the court terminates it and gives the child back to the mother. In Hamilton County, at least, that would be highly unlikely under the circumstances. If you don't wish to maintain the child at this point the only two viable options I can think of is to find another suitable caretaker or have the children services board take custody. If that occurs you should understand that down the road the child may be permanently committed which means the natural family's rights would be terminated and the child freed for adoption. I am not saying that would happen. The Court has to look toward relatives or others with a family connection first. But absent that, the next stage is to place the child with a family seeking to adopt a child.

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Answered on 6/14/99, 9:04 pm


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