Q: My friend has a custody situation in Arizona but lives in Oregon. Where does she turn for low-income help?
Hello.I am contacting you on behalf of a close friend of mine in an urgent custody battle in Arizona. She was served papers to appear in court in May to discuss severing her parental rights & needs help! She is a newly former Arizona resident. Due to being near homeless with her daughter (whom she has custody of), she was able to move to the state of Oregon with the help of another friend of ours. Because her situation was dire, & she exhausted all her resources and community agency support help to get back on her feet, she had to make the decision to go where the help & opportunity for advancement were available in order to save money for legal aid for this issue. I won't go into all the details, but there was a situation that gave primary custody to her ex, and supervised visitation to her by the father and his wife. From her side of things, they have constantly abused their custodial power to control her ability to see her son, and now this. Where does she go for help?Thank you.
A:
If this matter is in an Arizona court she is going to need an attorney licensed in Arizona because only a State licensed Attorney can appear in the court for that State. You need to look for an Attorney in Arizona. There may or may not be low income programs in Arizona. Usually a legal proceeding to terminate parental rights is only brought by the State and is in a Juvenile court and those proceedings allow a parent to request a court appointed Attorney. This may or may not be that type of case but if it is, she may be able to request a court appointed Attorney. This may be instead a petition for a step parent adoption and at a minimum she needs to file an objection and appear in the case.
Parental rights are constitutional rights so it is very hard to terminate them. A court is far more likely to order restrictions on parenting time then out and out terminate parental rights. But it is important to get an Arizona Attorney to advise your friend on this matter so if you really want to help, give her the money to pay an Arizona Attorney for advice.
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