Debbie Rowe today announced plans to ask a Los Angeles court to restore her parental rights, with the custody of her two children hanging in the balance. It was only a matter of time I suspected before we would be hearing from Debbie Rowe, Michael Jackson's ex-wife and parent of his two oldest children, about the fate awaiting her kids. "I want my children," Rowe told Los Angeles NBC.
The opening forays of a custody battle over Jackson's children has already gotten underway, with his mother Katherine Jackson winning temporary
legal guardianship based on a Jackson 2002 will filed with the court, with a formal hearing set for August 3. Katherine Jackson's lawyer have filed a lengthy guardianship petition asserting the children have had no relationship with their biological mother.
This is not the first time Debbie Rowe has asserted and backed off her parental rights, with previous cries of foul from the Jackson camp as being aimed at getting money. Married in 1996 for the express purpose of bearing his children, Michael Joseph Jackson (known as Prince Michael), 12, and Paris-Michael Katherine, 11, the couple divorced in 1999. Judge Stephen Lachs who presided over the divorce hearing at first agreed to Rowe's request for legal parent rights termination heralding Michael as a great father, but an appeals court reversed his decision in 2006 based on Rowe's petition to return
the rights to her. The appeals court wrote, ""A court cannot enter a judgment terminating parental rights based
solely upon the parties' stipulation that the child's mother or father
relinquishes those rights." Full custody for the kids still resided with Jackson. Rowe subsequnetly went back to court over Jackson's decision to take the kids with him to Bahrain, citing her fear about the influence of the Nation of Islam on the children.
Moreover,
rumors have surfaced (TMZ, US Magazine) that the children never were
biologically Michael's Jackson, but rather conceived by donor sperm,
possibly that of Jackson's dermatologist and Rowe's former employer
Arnold Klein.
Other rumors have the children being conceived in vitro, not being
biologically Rowe's, with Rowe serving as a paid surrogate mother.
Legal documents or contracts surrounding the births apparently exist
but have yet to surface.
As the two children’s presumed biological mother,
Rowe will have a strong legal claim to their custody if she decides to fight
for them in court, especially given the age of 79 of Michael's mother to whom he left custody in a seven-year-old will, with provisiong appointing Diana Ross as back-up legal guardian in the event that his Mom cannot fulfill her guardianship obligations. No doubt documents will be called forth by legal teams at the August hearing as to the details of each child's birth, with more revelations to unfold. And will Blanket, Michael Jackson's youngest child, possibly be separated from his siblings? A legal quagmire but be awaiting these kids, along with an unveiling of what went on behind the masks, veils and secrecy of their birth and upbringing.
