Court Opinion

ID: 9856434
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 06:47:20.701761+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:38:45.855168
License: Public Domain

SIMMS, Chief Justice,
dissenting:
The right of grandparents to visit their grandchildren exists only by reason of statute. There is no equitable claim or right to such visitation, and the Court, in my view, errs in stating otherwise.
The statute which governs this right of visitation, is, and must be, that statute which is in effect at the time grandparents file their application for visitation. To hold *98that the rights are fixed by the date parents die or become divorced would create arbitrary classes of grandparents. Also of course, the continuation of the right depends on the continuation of the statute. If the legislature repealed 10 O.S.1981, § 5, grandparents would no longer have a right to seek visitation, regardless of how the statute read at the time their child died or became divorced.