State of Tennessee. In July of 2006, my husband and I had to take physical custody of our two youngest granddaughters from my daughter because of drug abuse. We already had custody of my daughter's oldest child age 8 for almost eight years. Since I was working 40 to 50 hours a week I felt like I could not care for two more children actually they both were under the age of two years. My mother-in-law offered to care for our youngest granddaughter "E" but because of some concerns of my in-law's age I accepted an offer made by my husband's brother's wife to take "E" and care for her until my daughter could get her life straightened out and get custody of all her children again. I stressed so many times that my wishes were that this should only be temporary and that I wanted my daughter to have the opportunity for her family to be reunited. At the initial custody hearing held September
26, 2006, my brother-in-law stated to the Attorney-at-Litem that he wanted to check into the possibility of adoption, I then stated my objection and reaffirmed my desire that I wanted this to be only temporary. In all honesty, the statement made by my brother-in-law did not concern me because I felt like in his family that his wife was the person who made the final decisions and in all the conversations that I had with my sister-in-law about my desire to see my daughter being able to get her children back, not once did my sister-in-law ever mention that her and her husband's intentions were to adopt "E" as soon as the 6 months waiting period had past. As a matter of fact, my sister-in-law would always agree with me and reassure me that her desire was also "to keep the big picture in mind that my daughter get her children back and be a family again". These were my sister-in-law's exact words during a phone conversation in March of 2007. The following May, I got a call from my sister-in-law that they had hired an attorney to begin adoption proceedures which meant first they needed to take my daughter's parental rights away. I was not only blindsided but I felt betrayed and very angry and told my sister-in-law that me and my husband would do all we could to prevent them from adopting "E" which meant filing for a change in custody which we did in June of 2007. Before all this started my sister-in-law allowed me and "E"s older sisters to visit with her every weekend up at my mother-in-law's house and I even was able to bring "E" home to our house so the sisters could have an all day visit without having to compete with everyone else that might be up at my mother-in-law's house. Well after we filed for custody all visitations were stopped and the girls have only seen each other twice since May 2007. We hired an attorney in July 2007 and following their advice we filed to adopt all three sisters. My daughter, the mother of all three girls, has signed papers to give over her parental rights to us in order to try to get all the sisters together. We are told by our attorney that since we have "E"s sisters and the fact that I am no longer working so I can stay home to care for the girls is a factor in our favor but the fact that my sister-in-law and her husband has had "E" in their home for now almost a year that would be a factor in their favor. As it stands now we both have filed and we are just waiting for all the people to be served (two different fathers and my daughter). My daughter got served by them last week (the day of her birthday) and there was an ad place in the paper last week for the alleged absent father notification. So I guess we are just waiting on a court date. I asked my attorney to see what she could do to try and get us visitations with "E" while all this is going on but have not heard anything back about that yet. And the biggest "Kicker" of all this mess is the attorney representing my sister and brother-in-law in the adoption case is the same attorney that was appointed by the Juvenile Court to act as the Attorney-ad-Litem in the original custody hearing for the girls to begin with. Talk about a conflict of interest. I asked out attorney to try and see about getting my in-law's attorney taken off the case and I am still waiting to hear about that also. I am just in the dark about all the proceedures and what to expect next that it is just so frustrating. I feel so alone in this situation and really just helpless. I am thankfull that me and my husband were able to retain an attorney but to be honest, now that I am stay at home Nana/Mommy, we do not have the finances that we use to and I feel like David fighting against Goliath, since my brother and sister-in-law both work and make a very good income. Taking the added responsibilty of raising all three of our granddaughters will mean that I have to be very thrifty which I am good at and we will not have the extra money to afford alot of luxuries but if that means having all the sisters raised together growing up in one home and keeping the sisterly bond in place then I would gladly sacrifice any luxury. If anyone has any words of encouragement or advice I would surely appreciate it.

