What behaviors did you point out that you feel made the strongest case for gaining the kids? Inquiring minds want to know.
I think the teachers would testify in our favor but we're not quite at that point yet. We're just trying to figure out how to organize the massive pile of "evidence" to fully illuminate what a cruddy situation SD9 is in over at her uBPDbm's place.
Organizing our massive files of evidence was somewhat of a nightmare. Keep in mind I'm bot a lawyer and can't give legal advice. I can only offer my experience. What seemed to help us the most was proving patterns. No one incident (unless it's intentional and horrible) wins these cases. It's more a series of provable instances backed up by hard evidence. Example: We found out she wasn't taking them to the dentist so we started taking them. Then we saw they both had untreated warts so we took them to the dermatologist repeatedly for treatment while she did nothing. Then she was getting headaches while reading and he was squinting at the T.V. so we took them both and got them glasses. Then when it came time for the GAL to go get records they hadn't had regular checkups. We didn't do that because we only get the kids for a few weeks a year and we're out of state so clearly their PCP should be in state. Also, we always told their mom after we brought them to the appointments so she wasn't unaware. She just wasn't going to be bothered doing all that herself. This is a pattern of failure to provide proper medical care.
Another example is the laundry list of dead or missing pets the kids had over just a three year period. Cats, dogs, rabbits, etc. This shows a pattern of failure to provide proper care to any other living things in the household. We actually opened with this one in a thirty page "Summary" we submitted into evidence. Not because it was super important in the grand scheme of things but simply because it's pretty disturbing.
This was my formula:
Title of section
A few sentences about what the issue is.
Most on-point example of the issue.
Other examples to prove the pattern.
Hard evidence noted that proves the examples. (Paperwork, screen shots, recordings, etc.)
How the issue impacts the child.
Any steps you've tried to take to fix the issue.
Any response or obstruction by the BPD.
Maybe one sentence about how the court can help.
Once we completed this for every issue we submitted the whole thing to the L and she went through it and picked out what would be the focus during court and what was secondary that we'd get to only if we had time. The L tailored her approach to the fit the factors our particular court must consider when determining custody. Every court has a set of factors like that but some courts factors appear to differ from others. The goal is to have more factors in your favor. By the time we were done, the only two things the BPD mom had going for her were a history of majority time and that one of the two children is well adjusted to life in that area.
However, now that I've said all that, I just found out today that although the court that has jurisdiction in my case works this way, it is only because the standard for custody is "best interests of the child". The court with jurisdiction over the BPD mom's other case is different because she and the father of her youngest were never married. In that court, a change in custody would require, not what's in the best interests of the child, but that she be found to be "unfit"! My jaw dropped when I heard that. So it's important to ask your L what the standard is before deciding your approach.
