The Uphill Battle to Gain Grandparent Visitation Rights

Do you feel like you’re in an uphill battle being an alienated grandparent as you are attempting to “legally” pursue visitation with your grandchildren? Quite frankly, you are! Especially if your adult children have no “black marks” against them such as mental illness, drug and alcohol abuse, run-ins with the law, domestic violence accusations, or other issues which resulted in inadequate protection and care for their children.

If the adult child is deemed a “fit” parent; and their family is considered “intact”; and the contact or visits are restricted to the grandparent for purely spiteful or self serving purposes – there is really little chance to gain access to the grandchildren through the legal system, unless certain criteria can be met. Most states have Grandparent rights statutes but visitation depends on the different criteria within those statutes.

Washington State, for example, has a more lenient statute, whereas other states are very restrictive. The Washington state statute allows any person to petition for visitation rights at any time and authorizes the state Superior Courts to grant the visitation as long as it, “serves in the best interest of the child”. This statute allows the court to disregard and overturn any decision by a fit custodial parent based on a judge’s interpretation with no consideration of the parent’s assertion of best interest.

However, in one particular case, the Supreme Court affirmed that a Superior Court verdict in Washington State “unconstitutionally infringes on parents fundamental rights to rear their children”, and the verdict was overturned.

In Pennsylvania, which is the state where my grandchild was taken to, the term visitation is not used in their statute. Instead, terms such as partial physical custody and supervised physical custody are used. In order to be granted either of these types of visitation, the grandparent must establish standing such as:
– The parent, who is their child, has died
– The parents are divorced or have filed for divorce
– If the child resided with the grandparent for 12 months or more and was removed from the grandparent’s home by the parents.

The criteria considered for potential grandparent visitation in my state of AZ, and where my grandson was taken from, are:
– If child is born out of wedlock, or if a child’s parents divorce or the marriage is dissolved for at least 3 months.
– Historical relationship between grandparent and child
– Motivation of the person denying visitation
– Motivation of person (grandparent) who filed the suit
– Quantity of time requested
– Effect the time will have on the child’s activities
– Benefits of maintaining relationship with extended family

The Supreme Court case, Troxel vs. Granville, literally reversed the progress that had been made by grandparents in pursuing visitation, as it states: “the parents have the ultimate right and say in how they raise their children”. In addition, the 14th Amendment’s “due process” clause provides “heightened protection against government interference with certain fundamental rights and liability interests.”

The criteria that visitation by the grandparent is in the grandchild’s “best interest” rarely stands up in court today. Reconciliation with the adult child and mutually working out the issues is certainly the best bet for seeing your grandchildren again, however, most times this is extremely difficult. Pursuing Grandparent visitation is possible, but very costly, time consuming, and nerve wracking.

To conclude, we as grandparents have very limited rights when it comes to our grandchildren. Good resources are available to help us through the process, such as Alienated Grandparents Anonymous (AGA.org), Considerable.com, liveabout.com, state legal and government websites, and several alienated grandparent Facebook groups.

Coming up, my next article will include important tips, tasks, and documents, that we were required to provide in order to get our grandparent visitation in front of a judge here in Arizona.

Until then, stay strong WARRIORS!
Love, GrammaWarrior