Can I get a special guardianship order for my son amended or removed?
Posted: Tue Dec 12, 2017 10:32 am
My story, like most, is complicated so please bear with me.
My name is X and my partner is Y. I need advice regarding a Special Guardianship Order that was granted to Y’s Grandmother in June 2016. Everything was going OK but we have recently been informed through family friends that my son is living with Y's Auntie (her Grans Daughter) as HER son, We need to know if this is allowed and if not know our rights and options.
Gran changed the contact from monthly to bi-monthly as soon as the SGO was granted. We pleaded with her for twice a month or even once a month but she said no and overruled us.
We have been to every contact and had a great time with our Son on every occasion but several times when my partner has messaged her Gran for details of the next contact she has ignored it, only to message us a day before and say contact is tomorrow at 10am. I am sure she does this hoping we already have plans or don’t make arrangements in time. One time she messaged us out of the blue saying we had missed contact, we told her she never told us it was contact but she said she did (all of our conversations are through Facebook, the messages are logged and she didn’t ) but we said ok and we had to wait another 2 months to see him meaning we hadn’t seen him for 4 months. We have asked to have contact at different locations, but Gran said no. We send her a message a couple of times a month to check in on our Son and see if he is ok but 3/4 of these messages get ignored. We have learned to live with this but still message her regardless so we can show our son when he is older, how much we tried but we would love to be more involved and to see him more.
At the last contact 2 months ago Gran brought her daughter, who is my partners auntie, with her. She was very weird with us, didn’t say hello or let on and gave us dirty looks throughout the contact. My son was also different with my partner, very distant and was calling her Y not mummy as usual, what upset us more was hearing him call my partners auntie mummy several times, nobody corrected him.
I thought nothing of all of that at the time but 6 weeks later somebody I do not know sent My partner an anonymous message on Facebook telling her my Son was living with her Auntie and being brought up as her son and they were disgusted that my family were keeping it a secret so they had to speak out. They also sent 20+ pictures of her auntie and baby taken from her aunties Facebook profile. In one of them my son was pointing a water pistol at her and she wrote “shooting his mamma” underneath it. There were several others of them together with captions like ‘me and my boy against the world’ and ‘just you and me son’. After reading them my partner cried for days, it tore her to shreds. Since then several people including a family member and friends of the family have confirmed that he lives with my auntie, which is not what the judge ordered. I haven’t been consulted and if it proves to be true then surely it is a breach of the order.
My partner messaged her gran very calmly and politely asking if baby lived with her auntie, she also sent her gran the Screenshots and asked why she is allowing her daughter to tell everybody that he is her son and put things like that all over social media. Gran said her auntie has him a few times a week to give her a bit of respite and that they have formed a bond, baby needs that, and it is healthy. I then stepped in and told Gran that baby can have a strong bond with his great auntie, we understand that baby will get confused because he is young, the issue is her Daughter is telling everybody that she is his Mum and posting it all over social media which she shouldn’t, it will confuse him long term. One of the reasons we agreed to a SGO is to maintain ties with our son, not so they can replace us. Her reply was ‘what more do you want me to say’. I believe my son is living with the SG’s daughter but have no proof. An hour after my partner asked Gran about where our son lived her Auntie deleted her entire Facebook account and made a new one, blocking all of us and turning every single privacy feature on so nobody can see it, every picture has disappeared, it is very suspicious behaviour for somebody who is innocent and makes me believe that my son is living with my partners auntie as her son.
My partner also asked gran now its been over 18 months could we please have more frequent contact, she said no as it would confuse him…… confuse him how ? by letting him realise who his parents are and letting him form a bond with his biological parents ? he is confused now thinking his great auntie is his mummy !! I wanted to ask what she meant by ‘confused’ but my partner didn’t want to anger her gran through fear of her stopping all contact.
We feel so powerless and like she will try and stop him seeing us if we dare to question her further. When baby got took we were in a total different situation than we are now. We smoked a lot of weed, my best friend for over 20 years (more like a brother) and also my official carer was convicted of having a fling with a 15 year old boy and they made it sound like we would put my son in danger because we associate with him, he was made out to be Jimmy Savile and we dared not speak up through fear of them thinking we were OK with what he did. We are not OK with it but we know what happened and it was an isolated incident over a 3 week period over 5 years ago and he has never been in trouble for anything like that before it happened or since it’s happened. The boy lied to us all that he was 17 and we had no reason to think he was lying but we couldn’t say this in the hearing because our (rubbish) legal team said they would think we were defending what he did.
We should have done more to prove we are capable parents, but at the time we didn’t. We both have learning difficulties and my partner has Adult ADHD, the medication we were on for depression along with the cannabis gave us little motivation and definitely had an effect on her thinking capabilities and our legal team didn’t explain things on a level which we could understand. We have now made great progress, my partner volunteers at the local shelter, we have a nice flat, are drug free and have been saving, managing our finances well and going on regular holidays abroad. We dream of bringing our son with us one day but don’t know where to start.
Can you please tell me if I should bring it to the attention of the courts that my son may be living somewhere else without anybody’s permission or would that just cause trouble. Can her gran stop all contact if she wanted to and if she did what could I do about it and the big question is will I ever be able to get my Son home with me? what would I need to do for it to constitute a ‘significant change’, is this at all possible or am I dreaming? please please help us
Edited by Suzie in accordance with forum rules to maintain confidentiality
My name is X and my partner is Y. I need advice regarding a Special Guardianship Order that was granted to Y’s Grandmother in June 2016. Everything was going OK but we have recently been informed through family friends that my son is living with Y's Auntie (her Grans Daughter) as HER son, We need to know if this is allowed and if not know our rights and options.
Gran changed the contact from monthly to bi-monthly as soon as the SGO was granted. We pleaded with her for twice a month or even once a month but she said no and overruled us.
We have been to every contact and had a great time with our Son on every occasion but several times when my partner has messaged her Gran for details of the next contact she has ignored it, only to message us a day before and say contact is tomorrow at 10am. I am sure she does this hoping we already have plans or don’t make arrangements in time. One time she messaged us out of the blue saying we had missed contact, we told her she never told us it was contact but she said she did (all of our conversations are through Facebook, the messages are logged and she didn’t ) but we said ok and we had to wait another 2 months to see him meaning we hadn’t seen him for 4 months. We have asked to have contact at different locations, but Gran said no. We send her a message a couple of times a month to check in on our Son and see if he is ok but 3/4 of these messages get ignored. We have learned to live with this but still message her regardless so we can show our son when he is older, how much we tried but we would love to be more involved and to see him more.
At the last contact 2 months ago Gran brought her daughter, who is my partners auntie, with her. She was very weird with us, didn’t say hello or let on and gave us dirty looks throughout the contact. My son was also different with my partner, very distant and was calling her Y not mummy as usual, what upset us more was hearing him call my partners auntie mummy several times, nobody corrected him.
I thought nothing of all of that at the time but 6 weeks later somebody I do not know sent My partner an anonymous message on Facebook telling her my Son was living with her Auntie and being brought up as her son and they were disgusted that my family were keeping it a secret so they had to speak out. They also sent 20+ pictures of her auntie and baby taken from her aunties Facebook profile. In one of them my son was pointing a water pistol at her and she wrote “shooting his mamma” underneath it. There were several others of them together with captions like ‘me and my boy against the world’ and ‘just you and me son’. After reading them my partner cried for days, it tore her to shreds. Since then several people including a family member and friends of the family have confirmed that he lives with my auntie, which is not what the judge ordered. I haven’t been consulted and if it proves to be true then surely it is a breach of the order.
My partner messaged her gran very calmly and politely asking if baby lived with her auntie, she also sent her gran the Screenshots and asked why she is allowing her daughter to tell everybody that he is her son and put things like that all over social media. Gran said her auntie has him a few times a week to give her a bit of respite and that they have formed a bond, baby needs that, and it is healthy. I then stepped in and told Gran that baby can have a strong bond with his great auntie, we understand that baby will get confused because he is young, the issue is her Daughter is telling everybody that she is his Mum and posting it all over social media which she shouldn’t, it will confuse him long term. One of the reasons we agreed to a SGO is to maintain ties with our son, not so they can replace us. Her reply was ‘what more do you want me to say’. I believe my son is living with the SG’s daughter but have no proof. An hour after my partner asked Gran about where our son lived her Auntie deleted her entire Facebook account and made a new one, blocking all of us and turning every single privacy feature on so nobody can see it, every picture has disappeared, it is very suspicious behaviour for somebody who is innocent and makes me believe that my son is living with my partners auntie as her son.
My partner also asked gran now its been over 18 months could we please have more frequent contact, she said no as it would confuse him…… confuse him how ? by letting him realise who his parents are and letting him form a bond with his biological parents ? he is confused now thinking his great auntie is his mummy !! I wanted to ask what she meant by ‘confused’ but my partner didn’t want to anger her gran through fear of her stopping all contact.
We feel so powerless and like she will try and stop him seeing us if we dare to question her further. When baby got took we were in a total different situation than we are now. We smoked a lot of weed, my best friend for over 20 years (more like a brother) and also my official carer was convicted of having a fling with a 15 year old boy and they made it sound like we would put my son in danger because we associate with him, he was made out to be Jimmy Savile and we dared not speak up through fear of them thinking we were OK with what he did. We are not OK with it but we know what happened and it was an isolated incident over a 3 week period over 5 years ago and he has never been in trouble for anything like that before it happened or since it’s happened. The boy lied to us all that he was 17 and we had no reason to think he was lying but we couldn’t say this in the hearing because our (rubbish) legal team said they would think we were defending what he did.
We should have done more to prove we are capable parents, but at the time we didn’t. We both have learning difficulties and my partner has Adult ADHD, the medication we were on for depression along with the cannabis gave us little motivation and definitely had an effect on her thinking capabilities and our legal team didn’t explain things on a level which we could understand. We have now made great progress, my partner volunteers at the local shelter, we have a nice flat, are drug free and have been saving, managing our finances well and going on regular holidays abroad. We dream of bringing our son with us one day but don’t know where to start.
Can you please tell me if I should bring it to the attention of the courts that my son may be living somewhere else without anybody’s permission or would that just cause trouble. Can her gran stop all contact if she wanted to and if she did what could I do about it and the big question is will I ever be able to get my Son home with me? what would I need to do for it to constitute a ‘significant change’, is this at all possible or am I dreaming? please please help us
Edited by Suzie in accordance with forum rules to maintain confidentiality