Petition: Give legal right of contact between grandchildren and grandparents

User138562

I legitimately don't understand this. If the child is being abused by the parents, there are laws for that. There are ways to report the abuse and have the child removed. They will attempt to place the child with family, and at that point the grandparents may assume responsibility.

I really can't see any other situation where grandparents should have visitation against the will of the parents.

Personal anecdotes will not change this. I can give endless personal anecdotes about abusive grandparents and extended family. Also about abusive parents. In the end they are just anecdotes and don't represent the wider picture reliably. Anecdotes certainly don't justify entire new laws complicating family law even further.

This is a petition to give grandparents control when they've been denied something they feel entitled to. It's gross and exploitative in my opinion.

An excellent post - anecdotal evidence has no place
in a courtroom and would be disallowed, as would
heresay.

The OP’s ‘evidence’ is scattered, illogical, emotive,
strident, - entitled, without a doubt.

I won't be signing this petition. As a grandparent I am privileged to be able to see my grandchildren whenever I want but I don't believe I have a right to see them.

And the parents of the harmful parent, if given access, would ensure that their child was included no matter the terms of the court order.

I agree with VS that any grandparents’ concerns should be reported to social services and the police.

I do not doubt at all that in some cases the parents themselves are the harmful ones, please don't get me wrong

But gaining access to a child of a harmful parent actually puts the child at more risk in many cases... Because a harmful parent will punish the child.

If any suspicion is held that a child is with an unsafe parent then the first priority should be reporting concerns, not access to the child

I have said a number of times on this forum that my husband was abusive and eventually left me and our then seven year old child. At first my son saw his father and paternal grandparents regularly but then he started to become the target of his father’s abuse. He refused to see his father, or any of his father’s family, again. He would not be persuaded. His father then commenced proceedings to obtain a court order for my son to be forced to see him. This meant that my son had to be interviewed by a court social worker, a very kindly man who reported back to the court that communication should be by letter and birthday/Xmas cards only. The experience was traumatic despite the SW’s kind and gentle manner. I cannot imagine such an application being made by the paternal grandparents, who would I know have had only their and their son’s interests in mind. A child should not be subjected to this process. My son continued to be resolute and never saw his father or any paternal family members again, nor would he open any cards or gifts they sent. I am vehemently opposed to any move to give grandparents rights to see grandchildren, based on my own experience. My son flourished once all that was behind him - even his teachers commented on the change in him.

There are ways to report the abuse and have the child removed

That does not always work in practice.

I'm trying to argue the case from the viewpoint of the rights of a child to be able to develop healthy, loving relationships with wider family and also to know there is loving family there to turn to if their parents are abusive.

I agree that this needs to be looked at again here in the UK Callistemon and perhaps France has the right idea.

I'd support a cause whatever the approach, if I felt it was right.

I don't particularly like PETA attending rallys, smeared in animal blood and disrupting and upsetting people, but I support their cause.

You persuade people to support a cause through reasoned debate and rhetoric not by abusive language exactly TinSoldier and not by making sweeping generalisations.

We have already seen the OP being abusive to people on this discussion board (on a duplicate thread now deleted) name-calling those who disagree with her. You persuade people to support a cause through reasoned debate and rhetoric not by abusive language.
I know and I did tell her that, TinSoldier
It did her cause no good at all.

Under Australian family law, children have the right to spend time with and communicate with their parents and other people who are important to them. This includes grandparents and other extended family members.

Grandparents can apply to a family law court for a parenting order. This means that a family law court can make an order for a child to live, spend time, and communicate with a grandparent

In Canada Grandparents have the right to apply for visiting rights and decision-making responsibility, as long as it is in the child’s best interests.

In dire situations, the grandparents can even seek the Court’s approval for sole decision-making responsibility and even custody. Usually the Courts will grant this if the grandparents can prove that the child’s parents are unfit to exercise decision-making responsibility or to have custody/parenting time over the child. The simplest example to this is when both parents are abusive or are drug addicts.

USA In many states, grandparents have the legal right to request visitation with their grandchildren. If the parents object, the court will consider this. The court will also consider several other factors that focus on the well-being of the minor child.

France The child has the right to have personal relationships with his grandparents. This right can be suppressed only for very serious reasons. The provision concerns all ascendants (ancestors) of the child, so great grandparents also have a contact right with the child.

It does seem as if the UK needs to take another look at this situation.

I legitimately don't understand this. If the child is being abused by the parents, there are laws for that. There are ways to report the abuse and have the child removed. They will attempt to place the child with family, and at that point the grandparents may assume responsibility.

I really can't see any other situation where grandparents should have visitation against the will of the parents.

Personal anecdotes will not change this. I can give endless personal anecdotes about abusive grandparents and extended family. Also about abusive parents. In the end they are just anecdotes and don't represent the wider picture reliably. Anecdotes certainly don't justify entire new laws complicating family law even further.

This is a petition to give grandparents control when they've been denied something they feel entitled to. It's gross and exploitative in my opinion.

Yes, of course there are individual cases where a grandparent’s intervention might have helped prevent a tragedy but that is not what is being petitioned for. What is being petitioned for is an automatic right to have contact with grandchildren.

You cannot leglislate for an automatic right. Each disputed case must be dealt with on its merits by the courts just as parental rights are.

We have already seen the OP being abusive to people on this discussion board (on a duplicate thread now deleted) name-calling those who disagree with her. You persuade people to support a cause through reasoned debate and rhetoric not by abusive language.

Smileless2012

Whose fighting for the rights of GP's to the detriment of the child SORES?

It lends nothing to these discussions when assumptions are made that all children being denied their GP's are being removed from harm and toxicity, and is extremely offensive to the EP's and EGP's who are on this site.

I agree Smileless, even though, thankfully, I am not an estranged grandparent.

However, it would be difficult to enshrine in law.
Have other countries done this?

Well, SORES, what if you'd had parents or a step-parent who abused you, threatened you and you were prevented from seeing the only people you knew who truly loved you and you could speak to?

Not all grandparents are estranged because they are abusive.
Not all parents are loving and caring.
Not all parents prevent their children seeing grandparents for the good of the child.

Whose fighting for the rights of GP's to the detriment of the child SORES?

It lends nothing to these discussions when assumptions are made that all children being denied their GP's are being removed from harm and toxicity, and is extremely offensive to the EP's and EGP's who are on this site.

Each case is different.
We have read the news reports of reasons why some parents keep family out of the picture.

I knew a gran who had been barred from seeing her baby GS. She was so concerned that she forced her way into their home to find her S and Dil high on drugs and the baby covered in burns from cigarettes being stubbed out on him. She took him straight to hospital and eventually brought him up herself.

this is extreme busybodying

my children never once asked to see their grandparents,
who they hardly saw anyway, then suddenly upon divorce,
grandparent threatened court action, I said, go ahead
MY children can see you whenever they want and dismayed though I might be, I will not prevent it
there is a reason/s mothers remove children from harm
and toxicity and your fighting for the rights of grandparents
to the detriment of the child does you no credit whatsoever

What does that have to do with the issue being discussed VS?

Thanks for the link TinSoldier. anyone claiming to be responsible and knowledgable about the welfare of children who goes on to bring ‘Meghan and Harry’ into the argument isn’t to be taken seriously imo

like you Callistemon I remember cases where children were eventually murdered despite the desperate pleas and blocked intervention from concerned GP's
Those cases still make me weep, Smileless and others I know of which were not so well publicised.

She was, and she still is, because the children are now grown, and the cycle continues.
Drink, drugs, violence....
If only someone had listened to her, and the children, because they were both petrified of their parents, and loved the calm at their nan's house.

VioletSky

A child's primary right is to be free from harm

A parents ability to protect a child from unsafe adults should never be compromised

Why do you assume it is the grandparents who might be the ones to harm their grandchildren? Why??

Remember little Star Hobson?
Tortured and murdered by her mother's lesbian lover, a boxer.

The family were unable to get help for their beloved granddaughter and her grandfather committed suicide afterwards so he could look after his little granddaughter in heaven.

That poor woman must have been distraught MissA.