Legal Question in Family Law in Texas
Hi I'm in the state of Texas. 5 years ago my boyfriends sons mom trapped him into giving up his rights. She called over and over telling him he needed to come sign some insurance documents. One day she goes and picks him up to get them signed. They pull up at a lawyers office and when they go into the room there are 3 cops standing at each end and in front of the table. He sits down to sign the paper work . Once he realizes that it is paperwork for him to terminate his rights helooks up and asks "are you kidding me?" To the officer and he says "unfortunately yes sir we are" they informed him that if he didn't pay a rediculous amount of back child support for prenantal, postnantal, and a year of his life or sign the papers he would be arrested. He cried and shook through the whole thing. She continued to promise he would still get to see his son. Now the mother uses their son to hurt him by letting my boyfriend in his life and then ripping him away. She has put the boy in a bad situation in his home life. We are wondering how we could possibly reinvoke his rights. He signed the papers under duress. He was never served papers for child support as they lived together up to two months before this happened. We have texts showing that she is an unfit mother. Please tell me there is something that can be done!
1 Answer from Attorneys
FIRST of all, you should ALWAYS contact a qualified family law attorney or custody lawyer to represent you when engaging in this type of litigation involving the termination of parental rights, even when CPS is involved!
- Next, his rights have been terminated. That is it.
- The only way to unwind this order would be to show Fraud and Fraud is difficult to prove.
- It doesn't matter what someone promises you later on. Termination is termination and it is up to the parent who remains the parent after the order of termination is entered with the court, to allow the other person whose rights have been terminated to see the child after, or not. If they don't want then to see the child, they don't have to - unless there was an order entered stating otherwise, which is unlikely.
- The only way to fix this, other than proving fraud and re-opening the case, if the court agrees to re-open it after pleadings are drafted, filed and served on the birth mother, is to re-adopt the child, but there would need to be an agreement on the part of the birth mother for this to take place.
- Either one of these processes will be expensive and take time to litigate.
If you believe fraud can be proven, contact our office and make an appointment to provide evidence of same.
- Goldstein & Scopellite, PC has qualified termination of rights attorneys, divorce lawyers and child custody attorneys available to represent you at either one of their law offices located in Dallas, Texas and Tucson, Arizona - Please visit their websites at www.LawyersDallas.com and www.Lawyers-Tucson.com for more information or to contact them. Thank you.
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