Where do you go for gas for your car? Barnes & Noble? No! You go to QT.
Being a lawyer means knowing where you go for certain things. Lawyers know (or should know!) that you go to certain courts for certain types of cases. You don’t go to State Court to try a murder case, you go to Superior Court, just for example.
And that is what In the Interest of C.A.J. is all about. By the way, when is a case about the status of a child, it is called “In the Interest of . . . ” This is different than a standard divorce case which is typically titled Ihateyourguts v. Ihateyourguts (typical foreigner names in Gwinnett County).
Anyhow, CAJ was a kid who had a mom and a sometimes dad. Mom started getting it on with another dude. Another Dude is a registered sex offender. Mom has boatloads of issues, not limited to domestic violence and hanging around a registered sex offender. Sometimes Dad is not too happy about this, so Mom loans CAJ to Granny. Eventually, Granny and CAJ become a full-time show, and Mom and Another Dude shack up and get ready have another baby. Because you can’t make this stuff up.
Granny goes to the Juvenile Court in Cherokee County. Granny files a “deprivation action”. If you thought that only the Department of Family and Children’s Services (DFACS) did this, so do most lawyers! In fact, anyone can do this!
Basically, Granny is saying to the Judge, “Judge, CAJ is not getting the proper care from Mom necessary for CAJ’s welfare.”
The Juvenile Court considered the evidence. The Court even had Mom and CAJ examined by psychologists. Of course, things got worse when Another Dude allegedly molested CAJ, and things for Mom became way more worse. In the end, the Juvenile Court said CAJ was deprived and placed her “permanently” with Granny “for the purposes of adoption”.
The Juvenile Court was right to find that CAJ was deprived – not a slight on CAJ, just a finding that her Mom was a basket case. But the Court was way wrong to order that CAJ be placed permanently with Granny.
Why wrong? I mean, that sounds about right, right? No! The Juvenile Court in Georgia is not permitted to permanently place a child with someone other than the parent. The law only allows the J-Court to do this temporarily. As strange as it sounds, the law requires Granny to trudge over the Superior Court if she wants an order for permanent custody. Why? Because – whether you agree with it or not – that’s the way the law is written. Put another way, you don’t go around tackling other players on Turner Field. Why? Because the rules don’t call for tackling in the Major League.
And that’s all there is to it.