Q: How do I terminate guardianship given to my mother? Does temp guardianship terminate my rights?
My daughters were staying with my mom in Nebraska, while I was in the process of moving from Texas to another State. I was staying w/ a friend while finding a place to live & getting my youngest signed up for preschool. I signed for my mom to have temporary guardianship of my older daughter, so she could start school while staying w/ my mom & finish the last few months of the school year there & I would go get my youngest once I was settled in an apartment (which I now am). My mom filed for emergency temporary & permanent guardianship for both girls & is now restricting me from seeing them and won’t let me take my youngest daughter like planned. I’ve moved back and forth a few times in the last couple years for different nursing jobs, but am not by any means an unfit parent & don’t understand why a judge would even grant such an order w/o any evidence. The hearing isn’t until May & I can’t afford an $8k retainer for an atty to help me fight it now.
A:
If you are going to represent yourself at a contested guardianship hearing, you need to start spending a lot of time reading the rules, the statutes, and the case law to make yourself very familiar with both the procedural and the other rules involved. If any attorney quoted you $8,000 to handle your case, the attorney probably thought it would take the attorney a lot of time to properly prepare for it. You should expect to spend at least this much time preparing your case if you are going to go forward without the attorney.
A good place to start is often the Douglas County Law Library in the courthouse downtown.
You may want to start researching pro bono legal services or for attorneys that will handle your case on a sliding fee.
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