Special Guardianship - grandmother

[Penpineapple]

Does anyone have any guidance on special guardianship and changing that to custody.

My partner has a daughter who he sees every week. The birth mother didn’t want to be involved (he only found out a month before baby was born) and so her mother obtained special guardianship and baby has lived with grandmother since birth. Grandmother had been really keen for another child and had jumped at the opportunity to parent again. Due to the circumstances surrounding how my partner found out about baby he agreed to that as he hadn’t ever considered having kids and the way it all happened was terrible for him. Baby (not quite a baby anymore) has been with grandmother for two years, daddy takes her out, sometimes she comes over for the weekend with us. Daddy has always said he’d like to be her full time parent but had to wait til he had a stable income and felt mentally capable of doing it.

We live together, he’s a wonderful stepdad to my son. I have always had a stable income but we aren’t married.

DP would like to have his daughter live with us full time, the older she gets the harder he finds it to leave her at her grandmothers. She knows he is daddy and grandmother also refers to him as daddy. But, she obviously loves and cares for DPs daughter.

There’s a lot of emotional issues around that, for instance removing a child from a home they’ve been in for two years. What is in the child’s best interest? Is it to be with her dad? My DS loves her and when we’re together it is great but it’s not about me or DS. Is it even about DP?

I also don’t know whether she has to agree to relinquish special guardianship. The commute to see his daughter is fairly long, an hour one way and I can see during the week he misses her.

Just looking for some advice please. I know it’s not strictly adoption but figured it was best in this section.

For clarity, I would be more than happy for her to live with us full time but I also think what’s best for her is the most important. He is worried that as she gets older she will want to know why she doesn’t get to live with daddy, you know, does he love my son more because we live together? What if we have a child together etc.

TIA

OP there’s a thread running in AIBU at the moment where a poster’s long term relationship with her ex has broken down but he wants to leave without his 16 year old DD (poster’s stepdaughter). She has no parental responsibility and no authority, 3 younger children to raise and no way to enforce maintenance payments for any of the DC.

Bear in mind if your relationship with your DP were to breakdown there could be an expectation that you would step in to raise the little girl if he can’t/won’t. Equally bear in mind the impact on you and your DC if your relationship broke down and he takes the little girl.

You seem very kind hearted and clearly you have the little one’s best interest at heart. It seems like she is best placed where she is for now, with regular contact with her father and hopefully regular maintenance payments.

He doesn’t pay child support. The grandmother refused to accept it and so he puts it in a savings account for when she’s older. He worked out what he’d typically pay and saves that each month, depending on self employed earnings.

I don’t know why she didn’t want his money but I can make a wild guess

Why do you think that is?
People who have care of children under a SGO are often advised not to accept money if they cannot be 100 percent sure where it came from - I'm not implying there's anything dodgy here but it can be an issue. Likewise children under a SGO - my eldest included- grew up to have some very strong feelings about the idea of her birth family offering her or me money - which is also an important consideration.

I think that simply building and creating a strong relationship is the most important thing for your dp within the already established contact.

I think she doesn’t want a financial contribution from him to strengthen any “claim” he may have. Whether that’s right or wrong is not my business but I think he’s doing the right thing by putting the money away.

And I agree, he needs to get as strong a relationship with DD as he can within grandmothers boundaries as she is in charge. We’ve talked about it and he’s agreed which is good. I could see it pained him a little but I showered him your responses and the perspective helped

I thought that might be the case and it might be but please bear in mind the points mentioned in my previous post, she may well have been advised against it by SS or feel it is inappropriate for others reasons.
As you say putting away the money sounds a good plan that way it will be there for his dd to have not as she sees fit when she's older.
I do feel for your dp but feel he has made the right decision, it sounds like he's really stepping up to the plate and putting his daughters needs first which is admirable - and the mark of a good parent - and I'm sure their relationship will continue to grow and flourish.

She may also get an allowance from the local authority and not want or need his money. Biological parents remain financially responsible for their children so him providing for his child wouldn’t strengthen any claim he might have to his child, there would need to be a very good reason to disrupt the SGO and there doesn’t seem to be any reason for disruption.

She wouldn’t even let him buy baby things, or rather he bought them - told her what he’d got and she went and bought things herself (assuming baby fever and excitement). I’m glad he’s understanding and it really shows he’s come a long way. He’s taken onboard the excellent advice from this thread :)

Really hope things will go well. The older I get the more I realise relationships are the long haul. Xx