Opinion ID: 2488316
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: I am a grandparent.

Text: I also note that, as a child, I was blessed to know the love of three grandparents, one of whom in particular was like a second mother to me during early parts of my life and remained a vital influence on me throughout my childhood. It is with a deep appreciation for the love and special bonds that can and should exist between grandparents and their grandchildren that I, like the other members of this Court today, affirm the vital role that grandparents doand should play in the lives of their grandchildren, and vice versa. See R.S.C. v. J.B.C, 812 So.2d 361, 365 (Ala.Civ.App.2001) (plurality opinion I authored as a judge on the Alabama Court of Civil Appeals). The question whether grandparents should have a right to visit with their grandchildren, however, is often assumed by the casual observer to be something different than it is. Upon initially being confronted with the issue, many (including myself some 10 years ago as a judge on the Court of Civil Appeals) are tempted to respond reflexively and affirmatively based on thoughts of the kind, loving grandparents we were blessed to have in our lives as children (or are attempting to be as adults) and on relatively brief visits at grandmother's house, often with parents present. Ultimately, however, the question presented is whether the government has the power to mandate, through the use of force if necessary, the physical removal of children from fit custodial parents and to do so under circumstances that could be much different than those described above. Parents might decide that their infant son should not spend unsupervised time with his grandmother because of a concern about the grandmother's driving ability or her inability to manage stairs in her home. Parents might limit the visitation of their daughter with a grandfather to brief periods when one of the parents can be present because of concerns that the grandfather suffers from dementia or some mental illness he fails or refuses to recognize, because of suspected child-abuse tendencies, or because his manner of interaction with the children is less than kind. Sometimes there is objective evidence of such matters, evidence that would be competent in a courtroom. Sometimes there is not. Sometimes there is only a reasonable suspicion or a mother's intuition. Moreover, at issue here is not just Sunday afternoon visits for a few hours at grandmother's house. The power to order visitation includes the power to physically remove children from their parents and place them in a temporary custodial relationship with another adult for days or even weeks at a time. What is at issue here is the ability of the government, over the objection or even fears of loving and caring parents, and over any objection or fears of the child himself or herself, to mandate that the child be physically removed from the presence of his or her parents and placed unsupervised with another adult, merely because the government decides it is better this way. Unless a parent has been deemed unfit or has voluntarily forfeited custody of his or her child, the law rightly assumes that the parent wants what is best for the child and that, if the parent restricts the child's relationship with some person, even a grandparent, the parent has a valid reason for doing so and need not defend that reason to the government. [15] Admittedly, we live in a fallen world. All is not perfect. The parent may well get it wrong. Then again, parents do that all the time. But if parents can get it wrong, how much more so the government? As between fit parents and the government, I must choose the parents. If we allow the government the power to decide what is in a child's best interest and to enforce that decision over the objection of such parents, we have allowed the government to assume a frightening power. [16] I absolutely do not see how this or any court can hold constitutional a statute that, like the one before us, empowers the government to mandate, and achieve by force if necessary, the physical removal of a child from his or her fit custodial mother and father and the physical placement of that child, even temporarily, with some other person, over the objections of that child's parents merely because the government differs with the parents as to what would be in the child's best interests. To empower the government in this manner would be to make the government into the over parent of every child in its jurisdiction and to deprive the child's mother and father of their God-given role.