Q: If I have full legal and physical custody and I'm sick with cancer can I give my child to be raised by my family member

A: You can always make arrangements for a temporary care giver for your child. There is a rather simple form that is good for six months but there is a way that you can pre-sign several versions so that there is one for every six months going forward as far as you want. This would allow the child to live with the designated person/family for as long as you want and avoids the cost of a formal guardianship. The form is just enough to give the caregiver the legal authority to deal with school enrollment and medical care for the child but it is not custody.

I would hope that you can beat this cancer or at least hold back the progression so you extend your life, but the treatments can be grueling so having someone to care for your child temporarily is a good plan. The temporary form I mentioned above would be ideal for this type of situation.

For long term planning you should have a formal estate plan which includes a Will, a Durable Power of Attorney, and you may need some type of trust provision that will hold any money your child would otherwise inherit so that the money doesn't have to be managed by a costly court run conservatorship or worse, end up in the hands of the other parent if you don't trust them. Integral to this plan would be a nomination of the person or persons that you wish to serve as guardians or conservators for your child.

Now the extremely important caveat: Your summary does not reveal what the situation is with the biological father. (I am assuming that you are the biological mother but forgive me if this is incorrect.) You need to be aware that everything I have said to this point could be undermined by the efforts of the biological father to take custody of your son. This is because a biological parent has a constitutional right to parent their child. This concept was enumerated in the lead US Supreme Court Case TROXEL V. GRANVILLE (99-138) 530 U.S. 57 (2000)

137 Wash. 2d 1, 969 P.2d 21, affirmed., which you can read here: https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/99-138.ZO.html

In response to the Troxel case, Oregon has come up with a law that allows the Oregon Courts to award custody or guardianship to some person other than a biological parent but only after making findings that the biological parent cannot property parent their child. This is distinctly different from the test as between biological parents where the court makes a finding as to which parent the child should live with based on the best interest of the child. Rather it is a finding that is similar to what DHS must show to remove the child from the care of their parents - that the parent just can't meet the minimum requirements to parent the child.

So, assuming that somewhere there is a biological father in the picture, you really need to make an appointment to talk to an attorney to figure out what is your best course of action. Any proceeding filed to obtain custody or establish a guardianship will necessarily require the biological father to be notified, so you can't avoid dealing with this. Of course this may be a situation where the biological parent is out of the picture. I can't guess so I will leave off commenting here and direct you to consult with an attorney where the facts of the situation can be fully discussed.