Eight years ago, Debbie Rowe, the mother of Michael Jackson's two older children, told a Los Angeles court she wanted to give them up.
"These are his children . . . ," she testified. "I had the children for him. They wouldn't be on this planet if it wasn't for my love for him. I did it for him to become a father, not for me to become a mother. You earn the title 'parent.' I have done absolutely nothing to earn that title."
For his part, Jackson seemed to consider Rowe little more than a baby machine. When their daughter, Paris Michael Katherine, was born, he snatched her and "just went home with her with all the placenta all over her," leaving Rowe behind in the hospital, Jackson told ABC News in 2003.
When their son, Prince Michael Jr., told the interviewer, "I haven't got a mother," Jackson assented: "That's right." Jackson said the children would not benefit from contact with Rowe because "she can't handle it."
Now, however, the 50-year-old Rowe, who lives on a horse farm in Palmdale, needs to decide if she feels the same way. Rowe is considering whether to challenge Katherine Jackson, the late pop icon's mother, for custody. Katherine Jackson has her son's three children (the youngest, Prince Michael II, was borne by an unidentified surrogate) and is seeking permanent custody.
Legal experts have said Rowe has a strong claim to the elder children as their biological mother, and if she attempted to win custody Jackson's family would have to persuade a judge that it would not be in the children's best interest to live with her.
But Rowe has yet to signal her intentions. Eric George, her lawyer, said he will be at a Monday custody hearing to represent her, but did not know whether she would ask for custody or continued visitation.
When reports surfaced several years ago that the grandmother might adopt the children, Rowe declared she would "never consent to such a thing" and was "certain" Jackson's parents "would not properly care for the children."
Court records and interviews paint Rowe as vulnerable, an animal-lover who doted lavishly on her horses, dogs and birds as though they were her children and vacillated in her desires to see the girl and boy she bore with Jackson. She also appeared to love Jackson, even though her marriage was established for the sole purpose of bearing him children.
Jackson rewarded the blond, blue-eyed Rowe with large sums of money for forsaking the children, and money appeared to be a concern when she later tried to obtain custody.
