Mama June Gets Emotional Over Anna's Child Custody Situation and Cancer as She Nears Her Final 'Destination' (Exclusive)

Mar. 15, 2025

Mama June Shannonwas thinking ahead and anticipating the worst amid her daughterAnna “Chickadee” Cardwell’s cancer journey.

In PEOPLE’s exclusive sneak peek of Friday’s episode ofMama June: Family Crisis, the Shannon family matriarch gets candid about the possibility of taking custody of Anna’s eldest child should she die after being diagnosed withstage 4 cancer.

While sharing breakfast with her husbandJustin Stroudand his mother Rexanna, Mama June confesses she and Justin were relocating to Georgia in order to be close to Anna and her children amid the troubling time.

As the family struggles to come to terms with preparing for next steps, the reality star, 44, shares her worries about the fate of Anna’s daughters,Kaitlyn ElizabethandKylee Madison.

“It’s a hard subject to talk about but like, when that time does come, like whenever Anna was to pass away,Eldridge [Toney]has told all of us that he’s not going to be able to handle [raising her kids.]” she explains. “So like, I want to be able to have that place to be like, ‘Okay, you can come here.'”

“And two, I mean, she doesn’t have her f—ing affairs in order,” she adds of Anna.

Mama June also reveals that custody of Anna’s youngest Kylee will automatically go to her father while Kaitlyn’s fate is up in the air as Eldridge has expressed hesitation with taking on the role.

“She says she wants Eldridge to adopt Kaitlyn,” she says of her daughter’s hopes for Kaitlyn’s custody. “But when it comes about to go do that … There’s always like — kind of like it’s brushed off.”

“It’s going to be a mess when it comes to that child,” Justin adds.

Anna Cardwell and Eldridge Toney with her kids Kaitlyn and Kylee.Anna Cardwell Instagram

Anna Cardwell Instagram

TheHere Comes Honey Boo Booalum says she hasn’t found the opportunity to sit down her eldest child to talk to her about her plans without Eldridge around out of fears she may not “say what she wants to say.”

Noting how she would be able to give Kaitlyn “what she needs,” Mama June adds that she raised the little one during the first four years of her life when Anna felt ill-prepared to become a mother.

When Roxanna asks if the couple was ready to take on a 12-year-old girl, Justin shares his doubts about their ability to take on the responsibility.

“[With] everything Anna’s got going on, like, it may be a real possibility that we end up raising Kaitlyn,” Mama June tells Justin in a joint confessional as he replies, “You know I’m going to be here and do what I need to do to raise that little girl but she has to like get paperwork and make it legal.”

Mama June points out that signing away “rights” to a child is “not the easiest f—ing thing to do,” and tells Justin and Roxanne in the next scene that determining custody is probably a “hard pill to swallow” for Anna.

“At that point, it’s going to become real to her,” she explains. “She’s not going to be able to see her graduate, she’s not this. She’s not going to see her turn 18, like that’s her realizing like, ‘F—, this is true. This is my destination.'”

In December 2023, Mama June announced that Anna haddied from cancerin an emotional statement shared to Instagram.

“With the breaking heart, we are announcing that @annamarie35 is no longer with us,” she wrote at the time. “She passed away in my home last night peacefully at 11:12 PM.”

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Mama June: Family Crisisairs Fridays at 9 p.m. ET on WE tv.

source: people.com