Courtney Love Loses Custody of Frances Bean

Courtney Love hasn’t just lost her sanity this time. Citing personal and financial reasons, a Los Angeles court has taken away Love’s legal custody of 17-year old daughter Frances Bean Cobain. Kurt Cobain’s mother and sister will act as Frances’ legal guardians (What about Frances’ purported godparents, Michael Stipe and Drew Barrymore?). According to the court papers obtained by TMZ, the temporary guardianship will be in effect until February 10, 2010, six months before Frances’ 18th birthday—so even if Love reclaims guardianship after that date, Frances only has half a year before she’s free.

Is it more shocking to hear that Courtney Love lost legal custody over her daughter, or that it took this long?

A round-up of some of the more outlandish behavior Court’s displayed the last year or so may help explain the court’s rationale in ruling that Frances had to be cared for by someone other than her mother.

:: Love threw a “suicidal sweet 16” birthday party for Frances Bean, despite, ya know, that her father had committed suicide and all. (Or not?)

:: She admitted to British Elle that she used heroin during the first trimester of her pregnancy (although she didn’t know she was expecting at the time).

:: She drafted incomprehensible MySpace and Twitter rants, some of which resulted in litigation.

:: She wrote a post on her Facebook page insinuating that Britney Spears’ father Jamie molested the pop star, while providing absolutely no proof besides stating “i have it on First had authority [sic, obviously].” Uh huh.

:: She claimed that she was the victim of a massive scheme of identify theft. The police dismissed the case and called Love “bipolar.”

:: She touched off a (fake) fight with bite-sized Courtney copycat Taylor Momsen.

Hey, it wasn’t always like this—Courtney did have her sh*t together at one point in her life. Despite drug addictions and the loss of her husband leaving her a single mom, she still managed to have a successful (albeit brief) film and music career, garnering Grammy nominations with Hole and a Golden Globe nom for The People vs. Larry Flynt. (Hell, she even dated her well-respected co-star.) Love even felt so superior as a mother that in 2006 she publicly lambasted Britney Spears for her formerly suspect parenting skills, telling Extra TV, “Say what you will about me, and I’m not passing judgment, but when I had my daughter, I stayed home with her almost every night for the first year of her life.”

We’re not passing judgment either, but what an awful mess.