So, here I am, little ole me. I'm 36, been married to DH for over 6 years and my SD is now 15. She and I have an excellent relationship and I love her to pieces. When DH and I married, SD was living with her mother in their grandparents home. DH and I picked her up every other weekend (3.5 hours away from the house) to spend time. They had joint custody. A little over a year later, grandma passed away which now meant that BM had to be the mom. She decided to move to TN with her then boyfriend and proceeded to remove SD from the state. We were not happy. We got to see SD over the summers and at Christmas. A little over 3 years ago BM called DH and pretty much laid all sorts of news on him. SD had been cutting school (mind you she was there between the ages of 10-12), sneaking out of the house, shoplifting, SMOKING, failing classes and what we later found out, smoking pot and having sex. Of course, BM was never home, expected a child of that age to get herself up for school and get on the bus, clean the house, make her own dinner and get her homework done without any form of adult supervision. So at the end of this tell-all phone call, DH was informed that SD was coming to live with us because BM couldn't deal with her anymore. We were extatic and 3 days later I was a live in stepmom.

We decided to go to court to have the custody papers changed so BM couldn't up and change her mind and remove SD from our home. She was informed of court, postponed the first court date and didn't show for the second. (She called DH and asked him what he planned to do about the court date and he said nothing. To us that meant we weren't changing it, to her it meant he wasn't going). When BM didn't show for court, the judge would have granted us whatever we asked for. We only requested and received physical custody (which was probably bad thinking on our parts but oh well). We waited the 2 weeks to receive our paperwork, nothing. Called the courts, they claimed they had sent them out but would do so again, nothing. DH drove back to the court and got a copy from them. Basically what this means is that BM didn't receive papers herself, doesn't know we've gone to court, and to this day is still UNAWARE that we have physical custody. SD was in court with us and knows what the judge said.

Since SD has been with us, she's been on the honor roll every semester, active in cheerleading and sports, has a ton of friends and while of course there have been some hiccups, she's been a great kid and a joy to be around. She's done a complete 180 from the child we were told she was at BM's.

So here's my concern. BM moved back to VA a little over a year ago and has been seeing SD every other weekend on average. She has not been paying CS but to be honest with you, it's so much easier to deal with BM when she's not paying than when we were forcing her (for a whole 3 months) that we don't care enough to force the issue. Anyway, I digress, BM has just moved in with a new boyfriend who is in Iraq, (she's had around 5 BF's since she moved back) and she now believes that she is stable enough to have SD back. She keeps trying to talk SD into moving back to her house and while SD doesn't mind being at BM's during the summer, her friends are here. BM is still unaware of the custody change and if she keeps pushing the issue, we're going to have to inform her. I'm afraid of what this will do to her relationship with SD since SD has known all along. BM is not capable of seeing logic. She is a diagnosed bi-polar and her mood swings are horiffic. She got ticked off at me once because I wanted to take SD to the dentist for a cleaning. huh? DH and I do care that SD has a relationship with her mother, she is after all her mother but I have a feeling that BM will blame SD as well as us. We're trying to find a way to broach the subject to BM without involving SD if BM does push us.

Any thoughts?

Thanks