Nearly one year after her daughter Anna “Chickadee” Cardwell‘s death, Mama June Shannon was officially awarded custody of her grandchild Kaitlyn.
According to court documents obtained by Us Weekly, a judge ruled in favor of Shannon, 45, on Friday, September 20, giving her full custody of the 12-year-old following a lengthy legal battle with Anna’s ex-husband, Michael Cardwell. (In Touch was first to report the news.)
Michael — whose relationship with Anna began in 2013, when Kaitlyn was 8 months old — filed to regain visitation and custody of the preteen after Anna’s death in December 2023. In response to his petition, Shannon filed her own “emergency ex parte” and was granted temporary custody of Kaitlyn later that month.
At the time, Shannon noted in her custody filing that the identity of Kaitlyn’s father remained “unknown,” claiming that it was in her granddaughter’s best interest to keep living with her.
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Anna and Michael also shared 8-year-old daughter Kylee. In Friday’s ruling, the judge found that Michael “never provided any significant financial support” for Kaitlyn, although she stayed with him “for as long as five weeks at a time this past year.”
A family therapist also acknowledged that Kaitlyn expressed “fears” about “being taken away” from her grandmother and voiced her “desire to stay” with Shannon, per the docs.
Michael previously claimed in his petition that he believed Anna’s two daughters should not be separated, alleging that Shannon had a strained relationship with her eldest daughter. Shannon, for her part, claimed Michael “physically abused Anna” while they were married from 2014 to 2017. Both parties reportedly denied the accusations made against them.
According to the judge’s latest ruling, Michael “will have no right to visitation as such, unless otherwise expressly agreed to by the parties and the minor child.”
Anna was diagnosed with stage IV adrenal carcinoma in January 2023, and Shannon remained by her daughter’s side throughout her health battle. In July 2023, Shannon told Entertainment Tonight that Anna’s cancer was terminal. She died less than six months later at age 29.
“With the breaking heart, we are announcing that @annamarie35 is no longer with us,” Shannon wrote via Instagram in December 2023. “She passed away in my home last night peacefully at 11:12 PM. She gave one hell of a fight for 10 months … We love y’all and continued prayers and thoughts for our family doing this difficult time.”
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Before she was officially granted custody, Shannon exclusively spoke with Us about the responsibility of raising Anna’s child. (Shannon is also the mother of daughters Jessica, 27, Lauryn, 24, and Alana, 19.)
“I’ll say to my last breath, I should not be raising Kaitlyn and Michael should not be raising Kylee and should be here raising her girls, period point blank,” Shannon told Us in June, noting that discussing who would take over guardianship was the “hardest conversation” she had with Anna.
Shannon explained that she wished Anna was still here to care for her children, adding, “That life is not fair for the girls. Definitely not.”
At the time of her death, Anna was married to Eldridge Toney, whom she began dating in 2017. They tied the knot in March 2023 after learning of Anna’s diagnosis.
