Ex parte E.S.

B.O.S. ("husband") and E.S. ("wife") began living together in 2005. They had one child together, a daughter, B.T.S., born in 2006. The couple married in 2007. The husband, the wife, and the child lived in a residence next door to the residence of the child's paternal grandfather, O.S. and his wife, J.A.S. The grandparents spent considerable time with the child and that the child often visited overnight with the grandparents. At some point in 2005 (during the wife's pregnancy) and again on at least one occasion in 2007, the grandfather proposed to "adopt" the child, stating to the wife that "nothing would ever change [and] that [the wife] would always be [the child's] mother." In August 2007, the husband and the wife agreed to the grandfather's proposal for a "paper adoption" of the child. In January 2010, the husband and the wife separated. The wife took the child, and the wife and the child began residing with the wife's parents. The husband filed a divorce complaint against the wife, requesting that the child be removed from the physical custody of the wife and returned to "the adoptive parents, i.e., the grandparents, immediately." The grandparents moved to intervene in the divorce action, asserting that they were the child's adoptive parents and seeking immediate pendente lite physical custody of the child. On February 4, 2010, the trial court entered an order allowing the grandparents to intervene in the action, granting their request for pendente lite physical custody of the child, and directing the wife to return the child to the grandparents. In this case, the Supreme Court reversed the judgment of the Court of Civil Appeals insofar as it directed the trial court to dismiss the wife's action against the grandparents for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction. The Court directed the Court of Civil Appeals to enter a judgment remanding the case to the trial court and directing the trial court to transfer the wife's action to the probate court. View "Ex parte E.S." on Justia Law