Hello, we are in an awful situation that we can't find any support for or a way out.
My wife's father passed away last year, he had an 8 yr old boy, her 36 year younger half brother, that he was a single father of. His mother had died 4 years prior. He named us in his will to take his son into our family (My wife & I and our 2 daughters, 1 older than him, 1 younger). This was a rough adjustment for us all, but there is no other family for him to go to. His mother's family hasn't even acknowledged any attempts to reach out and contact them.
Fast forward 16 months, and he is not adjusting into our family at all. He lies about everything (he's smart and a great liar), he's prone to violent outbursts against the girls, he's defiant to my wife and I, he tells stories at school to get the girls in trouble or embarrassed, and he hurts our pets. We've gone to various psychiatrists and family therapy sessions and nothing is working. On top of all of that, my wife has fibermyalgia and complex regional pain syndrome so stress and fatigue cause her intense pain.
This is effecting all of our lives to the point where we can no longer function as a family. We've reached the point where we have argued about divorce, the girls are miserable, the boy is simply detached from everything and doesn't care when he gets in trouble or gets punished. Frankly at this point, he scares us. He hates our oldest daughter and has punched, scratched, bitten her, etc and we are afraid that as he gets older he could do much worse.
We haven't formally adopted him, we've just been taking care of him since his father died last summer, but we can't do it any longer. We've never had any sort of formal guardianship hearing and the estate has yet to be closed. What can we do? What options do we have since we are the only family that has even acknowledged him? He is destroying our family and our lives. Please help, we are desperate.
Thank you for any advice you can offer.
My wife's father passed away last year, he had an 8 yr old boy, her 36 year younger half brother, that he was a single father of. His mother had died 4 years prior. He named us in his will to take his son into our family (My wife & I and our 2 daughters, 1 older than him, 1 younger). This was a rough adjustment for us all, but there is no other family for him to go to. His mother's family hasn't even acknowledged any attempts to reach out and contact them.
Fast forward 16 months, and he is not adjusting into our family at all. He lies about everything (he's smart and a great liar), he's prone to violent outbursts against the girls, he's defiant to my wife and I, he tells stories at school to get the girls in trouble or embarrassed, and he hurts our pets. We've gone to various psychiatrists and family therapy sessions and nothing is working. On top of all of that, my wife has fibermyalgia and complex regional pain syndrome so stress and fatigue cause her intense pain.
This is effecting all of our lives to the point where we can no longer function as a family. We've reached the point where we have argued about divorce, the girls are miserable, the boy is simply detached from everything and doesn't care when he gets in trouble or gets punished. Frankly at this point, he scares us. He hates our oldest daughter and has punched, scratched, bitten her, etc and we are afraid that as he gets older he could do much worse.
We haven't formally adopted him, we've just been taking care of him since his father died last summer, but we can't do it any longer. We've never had any sort of formal guardianship hearing and the estate has yet to be closed. What can we do? What options do we have since we are the only family that has even acknowledged him? He is destroying our family and our lives. Please help, we are desperate.
Thank you for any advice you can offer.
