July 2016 - Severance: The end. Right?

It has been 2 years since our foster care journey began  and to be honest we thought everything would have ended much sooner. Our DCS case stayed at family reunification for over a year and a half. There was this hope that our daughter would do all of the steps to get her three children back in her custody and raise these children in a healthy safe environment. That day however, did not arrive. After the multiple chances my daughter was given by DCS, the chances finally ran out. We were going to court to place our case into severance.

Many thoughts ran through my mind. I thought about just how permanent severance was and whether I was ready. I thought about the toll it would take on our already fractured family. I thought about how severance would affect my grandchildren. I also felt sadness for my daughter for not having the ability to care for her children. As a child who was raised by her grandparents, I never lost the relationship with my mother. I wanted my grandchildren to have the same experience so I asked our case manager to allow visits after the severance was granted. The result of our meeting was allowing 2 visits per month where I would be the monitor. I have now entered into an uncomfortable position for my grandchildren to keep a relationship with their mother. I agreed to the conditions of the bimonthly visits because I felt it would be best for the children.

The severance pretrial was scheduled in May. The actual severance trial was to take place over 2 days at the end of June. Although these dates were on the books, I felt like we would never get to the end of this journey because our daughter had been given so many chances to get her life back on track. When our journey with DCS foster care began we had 2 grandsons. By December 2014 we had 2 grandsons and a new granddaughter. January 2015 all three of our grandchildren lived with us. We had stepped up and taken on all of the health and behavioral issues of each of these children. Now we were starting to see light at the end of a very long tunnel.

The pretrial court day arrives.  I felt like I didn’t want to even bother to show up because I felt it was going to be a duplication of the previous court hearings where nothing really happened. I however was wrong. My daughter had talked about signing over her rights in February 2016 and even went to her lawyer and signed the paperwork in March 2016 but nothing ever resulted from that meeting. It was revealed later that the lawyer didn’t file the papers with the court. The lawyer never explained why he didn’t file the papers. I went to the pretrial hearing thinking it was a complete waste of my mind. As I waited to be called into the courtroom I began to have this feeling that something big was about to happen. We are called into the courtroom and the process of regular court process takes place. Then our daughter’s lawyer states that his client has decided to give up her rights to her children. I hold my excitement but my insides are having a party. The judge asks our daughter if she was sure that she wanted to give up her rights and she said she was sure. our daughter’s husband said that he too wanted to give up his rights to our granddaughter. The judge asked him if he was sure that he wanted to give up his rights and he said he was sure. So I am thinking, yay it is finally over. Time to celebrate.  The celebration however would have to wait. Although the judge entered the severance of both our daughter and her husband into the court records they still have the right to change their minds and appeal. Also the actual adoption process is not so quick. Our case will transfer to an adoptions worker and in maybe 6 to 9 months our three grandchildren will become our children.

In the aftermath of the court hearing our family is still fractured. The truth came out as to why our daughter wanted to give up her rights to her children in March 2016. She was secretly pregnant with her fourth child. She believed that if she signed her rights away to our three grandchildren she would not have to worry about the state taking her fourth child but she was sadly mistaken. On June 9^th we received the news that our daughter had given birth to our fourth grandchild. We were asked if we would take the child and we said no our house was full. The new grandchild is in DCS custody. We have decided to follow the severance rules and completely and allow our grandchildren to grow up without the inconsistent visits of our daughter. Maybe in the future our daughter will be stable enough to be a part of all of our lives but until then all we can do is pray for her and our new granddaughter.