
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, August 2, 1994                   TAG: 9408020107
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-6   EDITION: STATE 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: DETROIT                                LENGTH: Short

MOTHER APPEALS ORDER TO GIVE UP DAUGHTER

A mother who lost custody of her 3-year-old daughter because she put the child in day care while she went to college asked an appeals court Monday to block the judge's order while the decision is appealed.

Jennifer Ireland's attorney, Julie Field, asked the Michigan Court of Appeals to delay the transfer of custody of Maranda ordered last week by Macomb County Circuit Judge Raymond Cashen. The judge ordered Ireland to surrender the girl on Aug. 11 to the girl's father, Steven Smith.

Cashen said the girl would be better off with Smith, whose mother is a full-time homemaker willing to care for the child.

``Under the future plans of the mother, the minor child will be in essence raised and supervised a great deal of the time by strangers. Under the future plans of the father, the minor child will be raised and supervised by blood relatives,'' Cashen wrote.

Smith, 20, and Ireland, 19, never married; he sued for custody last year.

In her appeal, Field says Cashen didn't have enough information on whether it was good for Maranda to be in day care; that he essentially granted custody to the grandmother, who wasn't a party to the lawsuit; and he didn't adequately consider that Smith has been charged with beating Ireland in 1992. Smith is scheduled to appear in court Aug. 11 on assault and battery charges.

by CNB