Should grandparents be given visitation rights to their grandchildren, even when the parents of the children object?
The Supreme Court is set to settle this question when it hears the case of Troxel v. Granville.
Gary and Jenifer[cq] Troxel want to regain visitation rights to their granddaughters, but the girls’ mother, Tommie Granville, wants to keep her daughters away from their paternal grandparents. The girls’ father, Brad Troxel, committed suicide in 1993.
Here are two stories of families that have faced or are facing the issues confronting the Supreme Court:
CASE STUDY 1
Marcia and Harvey Kudler live in Flushing, Queens. Their son-in-law gained custody of their grandchildren after their daughter’s suicide. It took years of struggle – and tens of thousands of dollars in lawyers’ fees – before they were reunited.
The Kudlers were young grandparents in 1974, when their daughter Judith’s manic depression and drug addiction made her unable to care for her own two small children. Even Judith recognized her limitations – she gave her parents legal custody of 1-year-old Vanessa and 5-year-old Brian.
In 1976, Judith killed herself at the age of 26.
“Our daughter left us a letter asking us to take care of the children and help them make their own decisions,” Harvey remembers. “We don’t own them, but we wanted to help them live the best life they could.”
But three years after Judith’s death, her husband sued for custody of the children. He won, despite his wife’s dying wish. The Kudlers were awarded limited visitation rights, and the children – who by then had been raised for five years by the couple – were taken from their home.
In 1979 the children’s father remarried and abruptly moved with Brian and Vanessa to Colorado.
“We went one weekend to their apartment for visitation and the place was stripped to the ground,” Harvey says. “He never came back.”
So began the Kudlers’ fight.
The Kudlers hired a private detective, who located the children in Denver seven months later.
But because their father had crossed state lines, the courts couldn’t help bring them back.
“It drains you,” Marcia says haltingly of their prolonged litigation and separation from their daughter’s children. “It takes everything out of you. It’s like a living death.”
They spent $80,000 over nine years to fight the various court battles.
“People thought we were a little cuckoo,” Marcia says.
“It was like an underground railroad,” Harvey says. “We were always sending messages and calling principals. We always knew where they were. We kept tabs.”
Through a sympathetic principal, the Kudlers discovered Brian dropped out of high school and at age 16 and was working as a short order cook.
In fact, the case was resolved not by by them but by the grandchildren.
One year later, legally emancipated from his father by his own choice, Brian moved back to Flushing to live in the same house where he’d spent his formative years – with his grandparents. “It was like bringing someone back from the dead,” Harvey remembers. Soon after, Vanessa also returned.
CASE STUDY 2
Kimberly Beck of Long Island spent most of her childhood not knowing her maternal grandmother, who lives in Westchester. That was the way Beck’s father wanted it. But now that Beck has gotten to know the older woman, she says her life is finally complete.
Edith Engel, a former writer and editor from Larchmont, lost contact with her small grandchildren, Kimberly and Stuart, when her daughter succumbed to manic depression.
“She cracked,” Engel says in a voice that sounds much younger than her 84 years. “She ran away from the children because she knew she couldn’t care for them. Her husband would not agree to a divorce unless she severed ties with the kids.”
Engel’s ex-son-in-law did not allow the children to see their maternal grandparents either – even though the young family lived just an hour and a half away in Long Island.
“I asked him if we could send them cards so that we could show the children that we still cared about them,” she says. “Our son-in-law told us we could send the cards as long as we didn’t write ‘I love you’ or include a return address.”
“You can’t understand the pain,” Engel says. “It’s like labor pain. Until you go through it, you can’t really know it.”
In 1981, Engel and her late husband Henry took their case to Suffolk County Family Court. They lost. The judge decided that kids could be further traumatized by visiting with their maternal grandparents.
She could have appealed the decision, but “I didn’t want to see the children against their father’s will,” she says. “The judge decided against visitation.”
But in 1986, Engel’s daughter wrote to the children’s father, telling him that the children’s grandmother was about to undergo eye-surgery for glaucoma. There was a chance she would emerge from the surgery blind.
“She begged him to let me see the kids,” Engel remembers. To the family’s surprise, a meeting was arranged for Jan. 5, 1986.
“At that point, I just wanted to see if there was a rapport between us,” Engel says. “If we had no connection, I would not have done anything to intrude on their new nuclear family.”
For the first time in eight years, she saw her grandchildren freely. Stuart was 11, his sister 15.
“It was like a volcano erupting,” she says of that day the children came to visit her in Larchmont. “The kids just couldn’t stop talking.”
“We’re a demonstrative family, but I didn’t touch them because I was afraid they would push me away,” she says. “They stayed for three hours and then we went to the Long Island Sound. I showed them where their mother had grown up. And they were crazy about it.”
“As they grew older, they began to come on their own,” says Engel, who is legally blind and immobilized by severe arthritis. “They were more receptive to hugs and kisses. There isn’t a conversation that doesn’t begin and end with ‘I love you.'”
“Knowing my grandmother just gave me access to a whole different side of my family,” says Kimberly Beck, now 28. “Without knowing my grandmother I would be a lot lonelier in the world now. There would be whole pieces of me missing.”