LOS ANGELES, California (CNN) -- A hearing to consider who will raise Michael Jackson's three children has been delayed another week, while lawyers work to avoid a court battle over custody.



Debbie Rowe said she married Michael Jackson to avoid the taboo of having childrien out of wedlock.



The delay -- the third one this month -- was announced Friday afternoon by a Los Angeles County Superior Court spokesman.



Debbie Rowe, Jackson's ex-wife and mother of his two oldest children, has not publicly revealed whether she will challenge Katherine Jackson, his 79-year-old mother, for custody or visitation rights. Katherine Jackson gained temporary guardianship of her son's children soon after his death last month.



The two women have been working to "privately and amicably resolve" the matter since Jackson's death, a Jackson family lawyer said.



Rowe's lawyer said this week that she was not asking the Jackson family for more money in exchange for dropping a possible custody challenge.



A close friend of Rowe said she has been grieving Jackson's death -- grief made more painful by paparazzi hounding her and media reports vilifying Rowe by depicting her as a heartless woman who would trade her kids for cash.



"Debbie's a very caring, wonderful, warm person," said Marc Schaffel, who met first met Rowe when he worked for Jackson. "She's a very humble person. People, you know, don't give her credit that she was a friend of Michael's for over 30 years."



Jackson and Rowe met when she was working as a nursing assistant in the Beverly Hills office of Jackson's dermatologist, Dr. Arnold Klein.



Rowe said in a 2003 interview, later obtained by ABC News, that she became closer to Jackson in 1996 when she consoled him after his brief marriage to Lisa Marie Presley ended.



"He was upset because he really wanted to be a dad," Rowe said. "I said, 'So, be a dad.' He looked at me puzzled. That is when I looked at him and said. 'Let me do this. I want to do this. You have been so good to me. You are such a great friend. Please let me do this. You need to be a dad, and I want you to be.'"



She told the interviewer they married in 1996 only to "prevent some of the taboo of a child out of wedlock."



While Schaffel would not say if their relationship was sexual, he said Rowe had "a true, true love there for Michael."



Their first child, Michael Joseph Jackson Jr., was born in February 1997. A daughter, Paris-Michael Katherine Jackson, was born the next year.



Details of how the children were conceived and who was the biological father have been closely guarded amid much public speculation.



The couple divorced in 1999 with Rowe giving Jackson full custody while she got a $8.5 million settlement, according to court documents. Jackson later agreed to additional support.



Rowe gave up parental rights to Jackson in 2001, but she changed her mind more than two years later and sought temporary custody of the children. A California appeals court later ruled her rights were improperly terminated, opening the door to a possible custody battle.



Rowe claimed in the 2003 interview that she still had "some influence" over how Jackson raised the children, citing his practice of covering their faces in public as her idea.



"That was my request, not his," she said.



"I am the one who's terrified. I am the one who's seen the notes that someone's going to take his children," she said.



She said the children don't call her "mom" because she did not want them to.



"It's not that they're not my children, but I had them because I wanted him to be a father," she said.



Rowe, 50, lives on a farm in Palmdale, California, about 60 miles north of Los Angeles, where she breeds horses and dogs.
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