Two Minnesota women joined forces to care for the 6-year-old son of one of the women after a plane crash that claimed the lives of three of the boy's half-brothers and their father. But now the women are locked in a child custody dispute over the boy, with his mother being accused of being emotionally unfit to raise him.

In October 2010, a plane being piloted by a father of five crashed in Wyoming. Also on the plane were his three biological sons. The man left behind two daughters and his second wife.

Following the tragic accident, the man's widow and his first wife, the mother of the sons, moved in together to co-parent the first wife's 6-year-old son. The boy had spent a great deal of time living with the second wife and her husband.

He had no blood relation to either person, but they accepted him as a member of the family, giving him his own bedroom and letting him grow up with his half-siblings, who were the first wife's biological children. The boy, whose biological father served time in prison and later was deported to Jamaica, considered the man to be his father.

According to the boy's mother, after a little over a year of living with the widow, she decided to move to Arizona to be closer to her relatives and get away from a "sea of grief." The widow fought the move in a Jan. 13 filing with the Hennepin County, Minnesota, District Court. About a week later, the judge granted temporary custody of the boy to the widow in anticipation of a hearing to determine final custody.

The widow accuses the boy's mother of being mentally unstable. In her petition, she points to a recent psychiatric hospitalization and the proposed move as evidence. The mother's attorney said that the hospitalization was due to a depressive episode, but that she is a fit mother.

Source: Minneapolis Star Tribune, "Mpls. custody fight pits women who grieved over Wyo. Plane crash," Abby Simons, Feb. 6, 2012