My Mil Hijacked My Baby Shower And Labeled Me As The “Surrogate.” She Even Created A Timeline For When I Should Hand Over My Son. Does She Actually Believe This Is Legal?

Gathering Evidence

The baby shower guests who were still there came over one by one. They told us they were so sorry we’d been dealing with this. Several people offered to write statements about what they witnessed if we needed them for legal reasons.

One woman said she had photos of the poster board and the two gift tables labeled for “Diane’s baby” and “The surrogate.” Another guest said she’d recorded part of Diane’s speech about being the real mother. Everyone was being so supportive and kind.

They helped gather up the gifts and take down Diane’s creepy decorations. Someone found the laminated cards Diane had made and showed them to everyone. The cards actually had instructions for guests about addressing Diane as the baby’s mother and referring to me by my first name only.

It was disturbing to see it all written out like that. Margot stayed after everyone else left. She helped me clean up and kept checking to make sure I was okay. We threw away all of Diane’s decorations and the custody timeline poster.

Honest Conversations

Margot asked if I wanted her to stay the night, but I said Trevor and I needed to talk. She hugged me for a long time before leaving. That night, Trevor and I had the most honest conversation we’d ever had about his mother.

We sat on the couch for hours talking about her behavior and his role in letting it continue. Trevor admitted he’d been making excuses for his mom his whole life. He said she’d always been controlling and manipulative, but he learned early to just give in because fighting her was exhausting.

He told me about times when he was younger when she’d threatened to hurt herself if he didn’t do what she wanted. He said he’d been terrified of being responsible for his mom’s death or mental breakdown, so he just kept appeasing her and telling himself she didn’t really mean the extreme things she said.

He looked at me with tears in his eyes and said he’d put that pattern onto our situation with the baby. He’d convinced himself she was just excited and would calm down eventually. He said watching her tonight made him realize she was never going to stop on her own.

She actually believed the baby was hers and that she had legal rights to take custody. Trevor said he was scared of what she might try to do after the baby was born. We talked about getting legal protection and making sure the hospital knew not to let her anywhere near us.

Seeking Legal Counsel

I told him I was scared too but also relieved that he finally saw how serious this was. The next morning we met with Dominic Taylor at his law office. Julia had recommended him because he specialized in family law and restraining orders.

Dominic was maybe forty with gray starting in his hair and this calm way of talking that made me feel less panicked. We showed him all of Julia’s videos from the past few weeks. He watched Diane at the baby shower presenting her custody timeline and calling me the surrogate.

He looked at photos of the poster board and the laminated cards. We told him about her showing up at my doctor appointments and telling the medical staff she was the primary guardian. We explained how she’d been doing this for three months and it kept getting worse.

Dominic took notes while we talked and asked specific questions about dates and times. He said we had really strong grounds for a restraining order based on the harassment pattern. He explained that what Diane was doing met the legal definition of stalking in our state.

The videos showing her at medical appointments claiming false authority could actually be fraud charges if we wanted to pursue that. Dominic said judges take this kind of behavior very seriously, especially when it involves a pregnant woman and an unborn child. Dominic pulled up the grandparent rights law for our state on his computer.

The Truth About Grandparent Rights

He explained that while grandparent rights do exist, they only apply in very specific situations. If parents are married and living together and both are fit parents, then grandparents have basically no legal standing to demand custody or even visitation. The only times courts grant grandparent rights are when parents are divorced, or one parent has died, or there’s proof of abuse or neglect.

He said even in those cases, the grandparent has to prove they had an established relationship with the child and that losing contact would harm the child. Diane had zero legal standing to demand custody of our baby. In fact, her behavior over the past three months actually worked against her ever having any kind of access to our child.

Dominic said,

“If we ever did decide to let her meet the baby someday, a judge would likely order supervised visits only, based on her documented harassment and delusions.”

He told us the fake contract she tried to make me sign had no legal validity whatsoever. Grandparents can’t contract for custody of children who aren’t born yet and who have fit parents. The whole thing was completely made up in Diane’s head, but she’d convinced herself it was real.