We spent the better part of this past week in court finally pleading our case as to why we should be allowed to continue visitation with my two young nieces despite the fact that their mother has been a hateful, vindictive, bitter woman for the past three years(much longer if I am forced to really admit the truth to myself). I, myself, spent two days on the stand proving that I had a contiguous, ongoing relationship with my nieces. My loving husband testified with tears in his eyes. Our oldest Angel Daughter testified in a compassionate, articulate and graceful way. It was grueling and more than emotionally exhausting. There is a law on the books known as "The Grandparent's Law". It includes aunts and uncles, so we were covered under the law. However, there is a lot of murkiness as to how and when this law will be upheld and enforced by the court, meaning that there is a lot of interpretation and a lot of subjectiveness to the wording of this law. It came down to this. We chose not to play dirty pool and to go after Mother's "fitness" as a parent.("fitness" meaning that she feeds, clothes and shelters the children) The law states, as I understand it, that if a parent is "fit" then that parent is given "special weight" as to the decisions which that parent makes for his or her children. I did not want to rip my niece's mother down. I did not want to take her children away from her. I did not want to cause unnecessary pain. I only wanted to be able to continue the loving relationship that I have had with my brother's daughters for the past 12 and 8 years, respectively. We presented our case from a place of love and concern. Mother presented her case from a place of ugliness and hatred. And the judge, whom I feel was both fair, and wanted to give my request the weight which it deserved allowed the case to go on for three days, at which point, he chose to stop the proceedings because he realized where things were going anyway. He began by spending some time speaking about what a good parent and person I am, and how he was sure that my intentions were coming from the right place. He went on to say some lovely things about me, stating that he could see that my husband and I have raised some wonderful children. AD1's testimony was a shining example of that. I am so proud of her and how she handled herself on the stand even though I know that there were a thousand places that she would have rather have been that day. I will never forget how loving and supportive she was throughout the entire proceeding and in the painful hours that followed while the very sad reality of what we all lost set in. However, the end result was that the judge could not rule in our favor because Mother was not proven to be an unfit parent. He stated that even if it was in the best interest of the children to have visitation with us, the state does not like to step into a parent's domain unless the parent is seen as unfit, and in this case, she is not. The idea that Mother is using her own anger to pollute her own babies does not have any bearing upon her fitness as a parent. What we discovered on Thursday afternoon, is that the scope of this law is extremely narrow and that emotionally scarring your children by filling them with your own bitterness and teaching them to lie, is not considered unfit behavior. Truthfully, the way the law is written, there was very little way we could have "won" this in the end. But, as I have stated here before, I could not have walked away from my nieces without letting them know that I was not the one who gave up without a good fight. Not only did we lose on Thursday, but they lost so much more. An aunt and uncle who adore them, four cousins who think they are the greatest, and the history of their deceased father who could have been kept alive through us.
My oldest niece, who is twelve and a half, is already beginning to forget things about her life before her daddy died. She even forgot some of the details about things she has done with her cousins during the past three years. The little one, who is now eight, remembers even less. My heart breaks as to the legacy which my beloved brother left behind for his girls. I made him a promise that I cannot fulfill at this point in time and that eats away at my very soul, but there is the future. There are years to come when these children will be out from underneath the unnatural, tyrannic control and hopefully, they will return and when they do, I will tell them first, how much I have always loved them and then I will tell them all about their father...
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