Grandparents who are actually caring for their grandchildren should take affirmative steps to protect their rights. This can often be done by obtaining legal guardianship over the grandchildren, or by actually obtaining an order of custody. 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.
For example, grandparents may care for grandchildren while a parent goes through rehabilitation for a drug addiction, and have legitimate concern that the parent has relapsed, but without a legal grant of custody or guardianship be without any power to prevent the parent from taking the grandchildren out of their care.
It is usually best to try to resolve grandparenting time problems amicably, as opposed to through the courts. It may be that the parent who is refusing access will be amenable to having the dispute mediated by a qualified professional. It is usually best not to make threats, and to make litigation a last resort – to be used only when all else has failed.
Don’t make negative comments to your grandchildren about their parents, or make them part of an emotional conflict between you and their parents. The children don’t need the stress, and that is perhaps the fastest way to get their parents to decide that your grandchildren don’t need you in their lives.
Don’t use access to your grandchildren as an opportunity to interfere with the way in which your grandchildren are raised by their parents. The parents have the right to make ordinary parenting decisions, and are likely to resent your attempts to interfere with their parental authority. Please note that this does not mean that you should not intervene or seek the involvement of a child protective agency in the event of abuse or potential harm to a grandchild.
Your grandparenting time will ordinarily be governed by the laws of the state where your grandchildren reside.
You may have other questions about grandparents custody. If so one resource you can check out is my book No Greater Loss which goes into detail about these situations, as well as many other aspects of grandparents rights.
NEIL
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