If you are a grandparents who is actually providing primary care for your grandchildren you may need to take affirmative steps to protect your grandparents rights in the case that your grandchildren’s parents later come back and wish to assert their own custody or wishes.
This can often be done by obtaining legal guardianship over the grandchildren, or by actually obtaining an order of custody. However you need to know the laws of custody and of your state to do so. Absent a formal legal grant of rights, grandparents may find it much more difficult to preserve their relationship with their grandchildren, or to protect their grandchildren from being restored to the custody of a parent who is not ready to assume responsibility for them.
You can get help on this from places like The Custody Center that specialize in making sure that grandparents know their grandparent rights and are able to exercise them under current law.
It is always best to try and resolve these issues without going to court, although court can not be avoided in some cases. The key is to become familiar with the issues surround grandparents rights and grandparents custody first.
Use a resource like The Custody Center to make yourself aware of these laws. In some cases you may need to go to a lawyer for additional advice, but that will cost you in legal fees that are often very steep and amount to a lawyer giving you information which is already available to you. Even if you do have to consult a lawyer you can minimize the amount you have to spend by familiarizing yourself with your grandparents rights before you visit them.
If you know your grandparents rights and they are denied, that is when you may need to take legal action. But if you don’t know what your grandparents rights are in the first place, you are likely to lose them. If you are a grandparent who is a primary caregiver to your grandchildren, get familiar with these issues immediately to safeguard your grandparents rights when the time comes.
NEIL
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