Father is hospitalized and has sole custody. I'm the uncle trying to help my niece.

[Ohiogal]

My brother was granted custody primarily due to abandonment and substance abuse by the mother. Is my best option then to request police intervention? This is happening 10 hours from me. My mother was there recently (went back to Arkansas) and said my niece's mother looked strung out, was not speaking correctly, etc.

You have no right to police intervention. And mother is not abandoning the child by being with her. Your mother is not a professional who can say ANYTHING or diagnose mother with anything. Furthermore, your mother is also biased. NO police officer is going to remove the child from her mother to give to a third party who doesn't have a court order for custody. And you are not going to get that because DAD allowed mom to move in with him and be around their daughter.

 

[Ohiogal]

Gotcha.


I understand.


I don't think I said she was the reason for it, nor did I intend to implicate that. I suspect she was a catalyst.

I don't trust her with my niece because:

• She abandoned my niece
• Regularly abuses substances
• The court deemed her unfit as custodial parent.
• She refused to tell my mother what room my brother was in at the hospital, so for 3 days after his suicide attempt we didn't know his status and could not find him (HIPPA laws or something, hospitals refused to tell us if he was there). She refused to tell a mother where her son was after a suicide attempt, let that sink in for the kind of person she is
• She has warrants out for her arrest in other states for at least DUI and driving without a license.

The following isn't in response to you, but why I'm on this forum:
My only concern is the well being of my family members. The law may claim her "best interest" is with her mother. If that's the case so be it but I came to this forum with the intent of acting in my niece's best interest within the confines of the law. If my only recourse is through attorneys then that's the route I'll walk. I was attempting "clever" (but legal!) ways to see if I could avoid attorneys because if I can avoid thousands of dollars I would obviously like to take that path.

So CPS was involved with the child before? What court deemed her unfit? Mother did not have to tell anyone where your brother was. HIPAA would have prevented anyone at the hospital from giving you any information unless your brother permitted it.
And yet even with the warrants, your brother invited her into his house and allowed her to live with him and their daughter. Go figure.

 

[Zigner]

I am the one he specified to be her legal guardian in the event of his death.

That really means very little. Children are not property that can be given away to somebody in a will.