Not My Family: The Monique Smith Story- Release date & time, where to watch, and more

Lifetime's latest movie, Not My Family: The Monique Smith Story, is scheduled to premiere on the channel on April 12, 2025. The upcoming film is based on the true story of a woman named S. Monique Smith and her quest to find answers about her true identity and her real family.

Monique Smith was subjected to years of abuse by the family she grew up with, who she thought was her real family. However, the truth couldn't be further from that. Curious about the truth, she set out on a quest to find answers to her questions and discovered that she was not related to the family she grew up with.

---

Not My Family: The Monique Smith Story: Release date, time, and how to watch

Not My Family: The Monique Smith Story will premiere on the Lifetime channel on April 12, 2025, at 8/7c ET. For those without a cable connection, the movie will be available to stream the next day on the Lifetime streaming website.

---

What is the plot for Not My Family: The Monique Smith Story?

Lifetime channel has revealed a detailed synopsis of the movie Not My Family: The Monique Smith Story. It reads as follows:

"In this inspiring Ripped from the Headlines story, Monique Smith endured a horrific childhood, only to eventually discover that her abusive family…wasn’t even her family at all! From a young age, Monique always felt out of place in her family. Living in constant fear of abuse from her mother and others, she dreamed of finding people who loved her and a place that truly felt like a home."

It continued:

"Because of the abuse she suffered, she felt she could never embrace her family and especially wanted to know her origin story once she became a mother herself. After realizing she didn’t have proper documentation, including a birth certificate or social security card, she goes on a decades-long search to discover who she really is. Yaya DaCosta, Robert Hamilton III, Solace Kimbro Jones, Kadeem Isaiah, Morgan-Rose Jordan and Djassi DaCosta Johnson (2025)."

Monique Smith grew up in Baltimore with an abusive mother and two uncles who constantly abused her over the years. When Smith was just 18 years old, she fled to Florida and began to earn her living through sex work. Throughout her years growing up, Monique Smith was never allowed to see her birth certificate, and without it, she could not go to college or make a career for herself.

After living like this for years, one day, Smith decided to go on a quest to find answers, leading to a decades-long battle for the document she had always been asking for.

Monique Smith found that her mother had sought multiple replacement Social Security cards for her, and each was under a different name, and she realized that the family that raised her was not her biological family.

Smith then called the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children to find out more about herself and realized that she was Missing Child Number 1201258. At the age of 55, Monique Smith finally got her birth certificate, and she found her birth name was Simboli Ruffin.

---

The full cast list of the Lifetime movie

Here is the cast list of Not My Family: The Monique Smith Story:

• Yaya DaCosta as Monique Smith
• Philip Fornah as Uncle Leroy
• Tiffany Black as Elizabeth
• Sir Brodie as Nelson
• Courtney Grace as Rubye
• Robert III Hamilton as Jonathan
• Lauren Buglioli as Trinity
• Solace Kimbro Jones as Bolie
• Kadeem Isaiah
• Anona Tolar as Caroline
• Angela Ray as Stacia
• Djassi DaCosta Johnson

---

Catch Not My Family: The Monique Smith Story on Lifetime tomorrow.