Location: Indiana (partner,niece,me), Texas (everyone else)
Hey everyone. I'm currently in a rather difficult situation. My partner and I have a niece who we've always been close to. We used to cohabit with her mother and siblings for years and years, we helped raise all of our nieces and nephews and love them all dearly. The living situation with us all became very bad after my SIL had 3 more children in rapid succession despite us already being extremely poor and struggling to get by. My partner is the mother's brother and their mother also came into the picture which also made everything worse. I don't enjoy to speak ill of members of my family online but she truly was a mental drain on everyone around her. She terrorizes people until she's given money and she tries to play psychological games on people constantly. I could make a whole post on her alone so I'll leave it here.
The situation in the house became completely miserable for everyone involved and my partner and I left. We moved states away and ended up closer to my family. When we left, this niece downright begged to come with us but she wasn't allowed. I understand this, though we love all of our nieces and nephews we understand we are not their parents. Still, frankly the situation for the kids just got worse and worse. Niece is the eldest girl and is HEAVILY parentified with 3 siblings under 4. She's one of 6 and even responsible for getting the one sibling that's older than her awake for school.
The kids are all on online schooling due to COVID. While at first we supported this decision due to some high-risk people in the household, the fact is it's been 3+ years since it's been reasonable to keep kids out of school due to COVID. Frankly it's become more of a generalized germaphobia at this point, they are terrified of getting sick at all and it's competely unreasonable. Because of this general fear of illness, the kids are also rarely allowed to go anywhever whatsoever, not even the park or to a store. The kids are all getting older and it's affecting their social and academic development badly. They're trapped in the house 24/7 with people who play mind games and force them to raise their own siblings. So, with all that backstory out of the way, let me get into the situation that has me writing here today.
My niece has been extremely depressed. She has the most amount of responsbility but the least amount of appreciation - any time anything goes wrong it's on her as she's seen as the most responsible and therefore the one that could have prevented it. Her siblings missing school, getting into things, falling off things .. it's her fault. She started self harming. Thankfully she has stopped, but it shows how bad the situation has gotten to her mentally. At various times for the past 2 years she has begged her mother to come visit us but she wasn't allowed due to her basically running the household at 13. It also may be pertinent to mention they live in a 3 bedroom with 6 kids and 3 adults.
Things came to a head recently where my niece poured her heart out to her mother, telling her how miserable she's been and how awful she's felt there. She told her mother that she could either let her come out to us now or she would be out here the second she turned 18 and would never, ever speak to her again. Her mother said she didn't care anymore, she was tired of trying with her and she let her go. We bought niece a plane ticket here. There was no communication on a timeline where she wanted niece to come back. It's only been a few days but this has changed and her mother is extremely upset and wants us to send her back. I personally feel like some of this is because she's realizing she has to do more of the parenting for her children now than she ever did before.
I am wondering what our legal responsbilities are here and what our options are. Our niece falls apart thinking of having to go back to that home. When she originally came out here there was NO communication of a return date for her. While I personally do not enjoy getting between a mother and her daughter, I also love my niece with all my heart and we want nothing but the best for her. While ideally the best for a child would be with her parent, my partner and I feel that's not the case here. We've already hired her a tutor to get her math to grade level, we've been looking at enrolling her in school here but of course we need her mom on board. We have been trying to get her to see reason with this situation and give her daughter real opportunities she's been lacking in her home. We're not currently going after legal action on this - that applies for us and for our niece's mom - but I'm wondering what our options are if we can't come to an agreement.
What are we required to do here? We bought the plane ticket for her to come here and they don't have money to get her a ticket back. Would we be expected to pay for her ticket back, or would that be her parent's responsbility? We don't have any intention to send her back at this point, but what are our legal responsbilities in this situation? How much would her preferences matter in this at 13?