Q: I currently have my children every other weekend and one weekday every week and have joint custody, The father just died
Long story short my exhusband lived with his parents so they helped raised my 2 boys for the last 10yrs of their life They decided to withhold this info from me because they did not want my boys to come to my house permanently since their father is not alive Another family member thought it was not OK that I did not know and told me It is almost my time to pick up my children on the weekend and they have made it very clear to me that they are not returning my children to me My question is this even legal can grandparents withhold another parents child from them when the other parent is now deceased. I spoke to local police in his area and they confirm that even if the father is dead that the grandparents can withhold the children from me and then I have to go to Family Court to get my children back from the grandparents. This doesn’t make any sense to me how can people who aren’t the parents of a child withhold children from their parent and it’s legal How do I go about this issue help
A: The police are right: this is a family court matter that needs to be addressed there. If you do not have legal custody of the children, it's possible that with the father dead, the grandparents would become guardians. And even if you have shared legal custody, the best interest of the child factors will apply, and a court is not going to simply pull them from the primary home (and school) they've known for the last 10 years....especially if they don't want to.
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