A GLIMPSE into a planet where grandparents rule:
A woman has two children out of wedlock. The father dies; she marries another guy.
Enter the paternal grandparents.
The mother, now happily ensconced with her new husband, decides her dead boyfriend’s folks are demanding too much time with the children. She tries to limit their overnight visits to one a month.
The grandparents are not pleased. So, like any red-blooded Americans, they sue.
Thus starts a lengthy, costly and painful legal battle. It devours years of court time, involves at least three judges, and provides employment for enough lawyers, psychologists, expert witnesses and social workers to fill Madison Square Garden.
Sensing an opening, others start glomming onto the lawsuit like flies at an open sewer. A great-aunt sues for visitation, claiming her companionship is in the kids’ best interests.
Distant cousins sue for court-ordered play dates. A piano teacher sues for the right to provide weekly lessons, claiming this will serve the children well.
After three years, the children have heard so many poisonous accusations hurled among the warring parties, the court decides they no longer are capable of expressing their wishes honestly. Meanwhile, legal and expert fees approach the stratosphere.
Eventually, the mother of the children runs out of money. The case is over.
The grandparents, being independently wealthy, win full custody of the kids – on the grounds that they are in a better position to provide for the children’s future than their indigent mother is.
Sound far-fetched? Not entirely.
The wacky new world that pits the rights of parents against the rights of the modern child’s extended family will soon be tested by the U.S. Supreme Court. At the center of the battle are two little girls from Washington state – real-life children whose situation mirrors the hypothetical court battle I’ve just laid out.
In the Washington case, the paternal grandparents are suing the mother of their grandchildren for more access to their granddaughters.
But guess what happens in the real world:
As the legal drama winds through the courts, the grandparents haven’t seen the girls in two years.
Meanwhile, the lawyers are doing a brisk business in this exciting new wave of custody law, while everyone else loses.
Now, the Supreme Court must decide not only whether grandparents have the right to overrule a parent’s wishes, but whether anyone else who believes his presence is in the “best interests” of children can win legal access to them.
How did things get so complicated?
“One thing we have to understand – is this for the child, or for the grandparents?” asks New York psychotherapist Carol Friedland.
“Whose best interests are we taking into account here?”
She’s right.
Death and divorce of parents are two facts of life that hold out no hope of slowing down. But with kids’ fragile lives so often wrapped in turmoil, we owe it to them to guarantee some stability. And their best interests rarely are considered.
We owe it to the kids to give their parents final say over their lives. Take away that right, give the state the ability to tinker with parental authority, and you ruin a child’s chances of growing up well-adjusted, happy and sane.
It would be grand if all those who love a child could agree on how much time each should spend. But except in extreme circumstances – such as child abuse – these kinds of relationships must not be legislated.
It should be noted that, in the Washington case, the grandmother in question, Jenifer Troxel, recently expressed the wish that she’d settled for the one visit a month the kids’ mother offered.
She hasn’t seen the girls in two years. One visit a month may not be much – but it sure beats leaving a child’s rearing to a bunch of bureaucrats.