California Family Law Blog

Do parents always have priority over grandparents? Our Santa Clara family attorneys, who have worked with many grandparents’ rights and child custody cases, have confronted custody struggles between parents and grandparents in numerous contexts, and a highly contentious child custody case that is currently unfolding in Huntingdon, Tennessee, indicates that there is not always an easy answer to this question. For the last year and a half, Mary Winkler’s children have lived with their father’s parents, and now Mary wants them back. She has served a small jail sentence, and is now free on probation.
Her jail sentence, however, was for shooting her husband to death with a shotgun that she does not remember pulling out of the bedroom closet.

Continue reading "How Far Do Grandparents' Rights Extend?" »

A new California law will let grandparents petition a court for visitation rights if their grandchild has been adopted by a stepparent. The law is based on Assembly Bill 2517 by Assemblyman Van Tran that was signed into approval by California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger last August.

As with the already existing laws regarding grandparents’ rights in California, visitation would then be granted if a court found that maintaining the grandparent-grandchild relationship was in the grandchild’s best interests.

“When situations arise between adults, children are often the ones that lose; they have no rights when visitation issues occur with grandparents,” states Tran. “Children should be allowed to know and maintain loving relationships with their grandparents.”

According to AB2517, SECTION 1. Section 3104 of the California Family Code is amended to read:

3104. (a) On petition to the court by a grandparent of a minor child, the court may grant reasonable visitation rights to the grandparent if the court does both of the following:

Continue reading "In 2007, New California Law Also Lets Grandparents File For Visitation If Grandchild Is Adopted By Stepparent" »

Recently, state supreme courts in Utah, Colorado, and Pennsylvania ruled in favor of a grandparent’s right to visit their grandchild.

These rulings indicate the recent shift taking place from six years ago when the U.S. Supreme Court, in Troxel v. Granville, curbed these rights in the state of Washington. The Court said that the visitation law was too broad for allowing “any person” to request visits at “any time.” The decision also solidified a parent’s right to decide who gets to visit with their children. Following the 2000 ruling, state courts seemed more likely than not to follow the Supreme Court’s lead.

Since this decision, grandparent visitation laws in many states have been revised, and state supreme courts have acknowledged and worked with these changes—especially in certain situations, such as the death of one of the parents.

· Utah case: Utah Supreme Court upheld the statute granting continued visitation. A 10-year-old girl whose mother died suddenly can keep visiting with her grandparents in spite of his father’s claim that the law violates his parental decision-making rights.

Continue reading "For Grandparent Visitation, Three State Supreme Courts Say Yes" »