Termination Of Guardianship Forms Georgia: Fill & Download for Free

File a report with the child welfare agency in the county where your 6-year-old sister and mother live. They will need to investigate the allegations of abuse. If you have proof, that can be very helpful to the case. Beyond that, you’ll need to prove that you can be a kinship resource home for your sister. You’ll need to show that you have stable housing and income, a clean criminal history, etc.Note that many times, the county agency workers will try to get a kinship resource to accept straight-out custody/guardianship, as opposed to the child being adjudicated into the foster care system while the kinship home (in this case, you) become a licensed foster parent.Because you are 18, you ordinarily would not be approved as a foster parent in Georgia. The state requires foster parents to be at least 21 years old, and some agencies want their foster parents to be at least 25 years old. However, there may be exceptions for kinship resources, so I would strongly encourage you to ask about that from someone more familiar with your particular state’s rules.Note, that if you decide to “wait” until you are old enough to become a foster parent, while knowing that your sister is being neglected/abused during that time, it won’t look good on any foster parent application.Pros & Cons to consider:If the agency gets you to take straight guardianship, typically you’ll have a lot less interaction with the agency, caseworkers, and legal system. It lightens their workload, and they can mark the case closed. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve spoken to people who went this route, only to regret it later on. And here’s why: if you don’t become a licensed foster parent to your sister, then usually you will not be able to get any support from the county, or any support will be at a significantly reduced rate. Conversely, even from a few years ago, the stipend for a child ages 6–12 in Georgia was about $830 per month, which could certainly help you with the costs associated with caring for your sister.Additionally, with a straight guardianship, in many states (not sure about Georgia), the biological parent(s) can repeatedly sue you to have the guardianship overturned. You’ll need to foot the legal bills yourself to defend your guardianship of your sister. If you later feel that it is in your sister’s best interest for you to adopt her, you’ll need to prove that the parent(s) are unfit, sue in court for the termination of their parental rights (TPR), and then petition for adoption - all at your own cost.Conversely, if your sister is adjudicated into the foster care system, the county agency will generally provide you with a monthly stipend to help care for her, take care of the legal issues, and if its determined that the parental rights should be terminated, they’ll handle that and you can generally adopt without cost. The risk is that if she is adjudicated into the foster care system, but if you are not approved as her kinship family resource, then your sister may end up being placed either with another family member or in a non-relative foster home.While a child is in foster care, the parent(s) are given a reunification case plan to address the issue(s) that brought a child into care. That plan may extend months, even years, before the child is either returned to the parent or before the agency decides that it would be best to terminate the parent’s rights and proceed with adopting the child to a foster family.If you report the abuse, and your sister is removed, then she may end up with another family. Even so, you need to be your sister’s best advocate - ask for sibling visitation, ask to work with the agency and/or foster family to keep the family connection open. Sometimes cases drag on for years, and you may want to be in a position when you are 21 to take over the role of foster parent if that is still needed at that time for your sister.