Children these days...

My wife and I do not have any kids of our own, however, about three years ago her brothers two boys came to live with us, and about two years ago we won full legal custody of them. Their parents are required to pay ME child support, however that is not happening. Anyway, the older boy learned quickly after a few butt whoopins, so now he is great for the most part. No scenes in public, does what he is told, and is an A student. He is eight years old. His brother on the other hand is still learning. I can whoop him and he will go and do the same thing he just got whooped for!! But I have made some progress, the whoopins don't work, but take away his time and toys!! If he is bad at school, he gets nothing but sitting in his room with books ONLY!! No TV, no games, etc etc. Going to bed early for misbehaving is another good one for him. He went through a temper tantrum phase, one time in public after a baseball game. Our plan at that point was to just act like he wasn't there. We did and he just screamed and followed us to the car and we went home. That worked wonders, he got zero attention when he was having a tantrum, he did it once more after that and hasn't since. He is six years old and he is doing better in school this year than he did last year. Like I said I don't have any kids, me and my wife just kinda jumped right in and we hope we are doing the right things the right way. I know one thing for sure, they are better off now than they would if they had to be raised by their idiot parents!!

Cliff

P.S. We are looking into adoption(have both parents agreeing to give up all rights) but the cost of the lawyers and stuff is setting us back right now. Combined, their parents are over $10,000 behind in child support.

See if there's a University near where you live with a law program. A lot of the legal paperwork and procedures that cost a lot of labor hours are actually 100% doable by law students. I know at my university, we have a student legal team that we can opt to have represent us in court free of charge. Apparently they're pretty darned good too because everyone is hungry to prove themselves.

See if your local law school has any students who would be willing to do some pro bono work for a good cause. You may be pleasantly surprised. I wouldn't worry too much about their competence, because usually these kinds of projects are going to be supervised by a professor. If you're not sure, you can always ask and maybe request a professor to supervise the student if they aren't already.