Opinion ID: 2257561
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Development of Grandparents Rights

Text: At early common law, grandparents lacked any substantive rights with regard to custody of their grandchildren. Even though, biologically, generations emerge telescopically, one out of the other, life expectancies of eighteenth and nineteenth century grandparents often prevented them from becoming active participants in the lives of their grandchildren. The superior rights of parents protected parental autonomy and the nuclear family, and negated the interests of grandparents and third parties. Many commentators believe that the erosion of the nuclear family beginning in the 1960s spawned grandparent visitation statutes in all fifty states, thus challenging strict parental autonomy. See, e.g., Jennifer Kovalcik  Troxel v. Granville: In the Battle Between Grandparent Visitation Statutes and Parental Rights, `The Best Interest of the Child' Standard Needs Reform, 40 Brandeis L.J. 803 (Spring 2002); Ellen Marrus, Over the Hills and Through the Woods to Grandparents' House We Go: or Do We, Post-Troxel?, 43 Ariz. L.Rev. 751 (Winter 2001). Conversely, grandparent visitation and custody, although statutorily derived, has not risen to a level that enables inclusion within the purview of the Fourteenth Amendment's bundle of liberty rights. As ably discussed by the Majority, the United States Supreme Court invalidated the Washington statute on an as applied basis because of its breadth and the failure of the Washington legislature to require due consideration for the rights of a fit parent to determine how his or her child will be raised and with whom that child will associate. The Pennsylvania grandparent custody and visitation statute does not suffer from these infirmities. The General Assembly has narrowly tailored Section 5311 [1] to limit grandparent standing to only those grandparents who have experienced the death of their own child and seek to maintain contact with the children of that deceased child. Further, the trial court is directed to consider the parent-child relationship, the best interests of the child, and the extent of the child-grandparent relationship before granting visitation or partial custody. Grandparents, as important transmitters of family values, as representatives of family legacy, as mediators between parents and children, or as rescuers of families in difficulty, are important resources for society in neutralizing the damaging effects of divorce, death, or drug addition. This statutory expansion of grandparent rights seems to invite conflict as to when the state government, acting through a trial judge, may influence the resolution of an internal family dispute, rather than recognize the realities of modern society. In this vein, one commentator complained, If we collectively allow grandparent visitation to be forced upon an unwilling family for no better reason than that some robed stranger thought it best, we have embarked upon a slow decent into judicial supervision of family life which has neither legal limits nor a logical end. Joan C. Bohl, The Unprecedented Intrusion: A Survey and Analysis of Selected Grandparent Visitation Cases, 49 Okla. L.Rev. 29, 80 (Spring 1996). However, with appropriate guidance and limited statutory authority, a trial court can weigh the facts in an individual case and provide a reasoned, intelligent, and fair disposition that does not descend to the level of judicial supervision of family life. On those occasions where courts granted grandparent visitation, the court usually focused on the facts of each case and awarded visitation or partial custody if the grandparents had a close relationship with the child and there was a disruption in the nuclear family. I believe that, in the twenty-first century, the state's interest in protecting a child's relationship with a third party, particularly a grandparent with whom the child has formed an attachment and benefited from a nurturing and caring association, has heightened because, in some instances, there is no intact or stable family to otherwise protect the child. Interestingly, in Meyer, Pierce, Barnette, and Yoder, the challenge to parental rights came from the state, which tried to curtail parental child-rearing decisions in some manner. Grandparent visitation and partial custody cases, however, do not set the state against parental authority but instead mediate between a parent and the interested grandparent. Because of the limited reach of the Pennsylvania statute, this conflict is restricted to a parent and one grandparent or a parent and one set of grandparents.