Grandparents and Divorce
When your children come to you with their tales of marital woe beware. There will be a great temptation to finance your child's divorce, thinking that you are helping them get custody or more marital property but in most cases, hiring separate divorce lawyers is the death knell for any co-parenting relationship. Grandparents generally do not have rights to access their grandchildren in either divorce cases or when the parents are still together. Paying for your child's attorney will be seen by the other parent as taking sides and when one parent "wins" custody, guess whose parents will get the short end of the child visitation stick? Because American courts give great deference to parents, allowing them to chose whom shall have access to their children, our own Supreme Court has held that "fit parents" are presumed to act in their children's best interests. The state should not, therefore, "inject itself into the private realm of the family" to question the decisions of those parents. That means if the parents don't want the grandparents to see the grandchildren, the parents choices will usually trump what ever "rights" the grandparents might think they have.
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