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Help, proving mother unfit.

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00mom00

Junior Member
What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)? Iowa

I am trying to get some advice for my mom. My mom has been raising my nephew, her grandson, for the past 3.5 years. To try to make this more understandable I am going to call him (my nephew) Matt. My sister was not ready to give up the life of independence and partying. She works from 8am-5pm five days a week. After work she parties or she hangs with her boyfriends. On her days off she is nowhere to be found for she is partying or bar hoping. She will go WEEKS before giving Matt a call or a visit. My mom has the hardest time taking Matt to the doctor because legally she cannot take him to the doctor without a parent present. Very often Matt has gone without doctor visits because his mom was nowhere to be found, and he would eventually get so sick and be hospitalized or close to it from infection. As well as missing many immunizations because my mom cannot sign off on them. Getting permission slips signed for his daycare/preschool is a challenge as well. Meanwhile my sister collects food stamps for being a “single mother” and her son gets nothing out of those food stamps. Often my sister will use Matt as a weapon against my mom. Whenever she gets upset with my mom she threatens to take Matt away and send him to a sitter. The sitter being, Matts father’s girlfriend. You may wonder where the father is in all this; well he is in the military and away in Afghanistan. When my sister gets upset with my mom she sends him to his father’s girlfriend, even though his father is not present. Now he does not often go to the sitter’s house, only about once every few months does he go there. The sitter house is filthy with trash, food, dirty diapers, hoarding all over the place, and is infested with HUGE cochroaches. Matt is deathly afraid of bugs and every time he is told he has to go over there, he throws a huge fit because he is scared of the bugs and because he hates leaving his home with my mom.
The last straw came when my sister’s boyfriend broke up with her, she then decided to join the military and sign custody of Matt over to a close co-worker of hers. Although this co-worker and my sister are close, this co-worker does not have a relationship with Matt. He has seen her between 3-5 times through-out the past 2 years. (this has not yet happened but is in the works)
So here is my question, since Matt has been living with my mom for the past 3.5 years, my mom has provided all support for him, physical, emotional and financial. Does she have any fight to gain any type of custody of Matt? Matt looks at his grandmother as his mom. He used to even call her mom, but my mom would correct him to say grandma. So he cleverly came up with his own name for her which is a cross between grandma and mommy which I will not say on here since it is a personal name he calls her. Matt is 5. I really think that if my sister try’s to sign over her half of the custody to this co-worker it will traumatize Matt. I also think that if the father were to fight for full custody, it would traumatize matt as well because my mom is his world and has been his environment and psychological parent for most of his life. Not to mention the horrible living conditions he would face if he had to move in to his father’s house.
Any advice and help would be amazing.What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)?
 
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