Litigation

YS's in-laws are threatening litigation again. It feels like just last week that they signed off on the current court settlement. Yea, the one they could not carry through on because of their staggering list(s) of disabilities. It is hard to know whom all is conspiring in these litigations. It is hard to see over the in-law barrier in any event. Who ever expects to be within litigation distance of their son's in-laws? Their names and faces blurred during the social intensity of the wedding in 2012. The need to know one another was a shock to the system during the 2018 scandal which placed our GKs in protective custody with the maternal grandparents. They were still mostly strangers to us when CPS approached us about their concerns over the care they were receiving with the maternal GPs. Geography had eliminated us during the initial placement. Our farm is 3 hours north --and across jurisdictional lines-- from the epicenter of this drama. After the first case review, the court decided it was worth the inconvenience to move them here. I have wondered often if, from their livingroom, it looks like we were the ones who started the lawyer games between us. We have yet to hire a lawyer for this jolly good fun. CPS was well endowed with lawyers on the case. We worked with them at their discretion only. I don't know when, exactly, their personal lawyer came onboard. For all I know, they hired the lawyer before CPS approached us about the custody shift. For certain, they even brought their lawyer talk to the wedding. Their patriarch was quite proud of how often people told him, "You should have been a lawyer." He took it as a compliment when I used those very words in hopes of changing the subject. This is a wedding, stranger. Do we really have to talk about legal conspiracies? Springing from there, it was no great surprise when my son's wife started bringing up divorce soon after the wedding.

At present, the older and chronically disabled sister-in-law wants to adopt the children. Is it memory or projection when I hear my DIL screaming, "Over my dead body! ! !" These sisters were already fueding mightily when the DIL was still my neice's best HS friend. Removing the children from her influence was high on the list of her reasons for endorsing the custody shift. Of course her first choice would have been to regain her full parental rights. That would have been my first choice, also, but the court was far from impressed with her progress. I didn't feel confident to argue the court decision, but I was more than willing to work with them on healing hopes. I believe with all my heart that, for both better and worse, there is no substitusky for "Mom."

I don't give the threat much credence, but laced with the political instabilities of Coronaville? ? ? Has zoom court improved any since the rounds we endured such a short time ago? However frivolous the lawsuit, they are still a high dollar and time consuming nuisance. The threat of lawyer games effectively disables any advances I thought we had made between the two family branches. Back to guarding every word and action for fear it might be used against us in a court of law.

Plying therapy tools. . . 

Again I leave the mood icon on the rapid cycling median. . .