Background: My half sister (19 yrs my senior) used and abused drugs since I was little, she started turning tricks and ended up pregnant. Our mother took full custody of my nephew two days after he was born. My half sister eventually straightened out her life, but never attempted to reclaim her kid, nor did she ever pay child support to our mom (legally or otherwise).

Our mom died when my nephew was still a minor, and since he had no relationship with his birth mother, I petitioned family court to have myself appointed his guardian. He grew up with me, and in many ways, I already was a parental figure (I went to the PTA meeting/doc appts etc etc) along with my parents. However, since my half sister is still alive, she needed to agree to the transfer of guardianship. I thought it would be a simple enough thing, since she's never shown any interest in my nephew.

She sued me for custody, claiming among other things that I was unfit to be a guardian cause I was irresponsible & was of poor character. Mind you, this woman is 19 yrs my senior and before she got clean, I could count on one hand the number of times I saw her sober growing up. She sued not because she wanted her kid back, but because she thought I was going to hit her up for child support (giving the Devil it's due, she was better off than me financially) and tried to circumvent it by getting her child back.

So, off to family court we go and it was a fun day for me and quite an embarrassing one for her. For starters, in NY (and I guess the same elsewhere) when a minor is 14+, they can request who they want appointed as their guardian. CPS did a full background check on the both of us, and the judge admonished her for claiming that I was of poor character when she had a criminal record a mile long.

In 20 minutes, her entire case was laughed and tossed out, I was given custody of my nephew and that was the last time I saw her. I didn't request child support, leaving it up to my nephew to claim if he wanted to do so, I was just happy to have her out of my life/hair.

tl;dr

Half sister who never took care of her kid sued me for custody after our mother died. Her case against me was tossed out after the judge ripped her a new one. I was granted full custody of my nephew.