Monday, May 26, 2014

Less than no progress

We had court last week. We expected nothing to happen: the first hearing in the termination process is basically the county saying, "hey judge, we plan to proceed with this petition. Everything is filed correctly and all of the necessary parties have been served." Then the judge says, "oh okay, cool. See you in a few weeks."

Well, instead of that, we were adjourned for three weeks. The mom didn't show up, and the dad didn't know he had a new attorney despite having been properly notified (and the new attorney didn't know either, somehow, and hadn't seen any of the paperwork on the case). So we sat in the waiting room from 8:50 until 11:15, and then we spent four minutes in the courtroom setting a new date.

The only positive thing is that the judge didn't want to wait until the next permanency hearing we have scheduled for the end of June, which indicates that he's not feeling patient with the case. He scheduled us for a new date in the middle of June - in the same week that we have Nora's birthday and Andy's birthday and checkups for both girls and my sister coming into town for kids' birthday parties. PERFECT.

Really looking forward to some sort of progress happening before M is a teenager.

Monday, May 5, 2014

A little bit of progress

So the paperwork to file M's parents' rights was filed a week and a half ago.

In the three months since I last posted, M's mom has decided she'd rather M stay with us than go with her dad. This is awesome, but only if M's mom sticks to this statement in court and doesn't let M's dad intimidate her into staying quiet about it.

M's dad is not happy about being served with the termination papers. He says she shouldn't be adopted and that he's going to file for custody. He's had two and a half years in which he could have done that, so I'm sure the judge will see right through it. It does indicate that things aren't going to be as easy as we could have hoped, though.

Our first hearing is on May 22. Nothing will happen that day, and then we'll come back for our permanency hearing (those are the ones that happen every six months) in June. We'll eventually hire a lawyer, but the one we're going to hire is (rightfully) very expensive and it doesn't make financial sense to hire her until we're closer to knowing where this is all heading.

It is a lot of fun to have the girls old enough to interact. The baby is ten months and is getting really close to walking. It's exhausting and so fun and I wouldn't change a second of it. Besides M not being ours [yet?] - I'd change that in a heartbeat.