To think this is f*cking terrifying?

[RomeoBunny]

news.sky.com/story/grandparents-right-to-see-grandchildren-could-be-protected-by-law-11363044

Genetic connection should not equal an automatic right to see a child. Grandparents are NOT the parents. How many times does this need to be stated? They are not 'entitled' to anything. In many cases they are toxic and it is beyond the simple reason of their children's divorce for not seeing their grandchildren.

Your time with them is what your children wish you to have with THEIR children.

This is batshit.

The entitled asses at gransnet must be rubbing their hands together with glee. Oh hell no, over my dead body.

:@Hygge I am so sorry for your loss and for the terrible situation with your parents in law.

I come from perhaps a different viewpoint. My brother and his ex have a daughter. I adored his daughter from birth and obviously so did my parents. We saw her regularly with my brother. Her mum happily accepted gifts and although they weren't together we all got on and the mum would bring my niece to see me regularly in my home. My brother died in an accident when his daughter was two. Immediately after the funetal the ex blocked my entire family from any contact, even when my father was on his deathbed. It was and still is heart breaking. My niece is now 18 and has no idea her father's family would welcome her with open arms. We have no idea what she has been told.

Armchair - I totally get that the situation is heartbreaking. I'm sorry for your loss. But you posted here, so forgive my response:
Who knows what the mother's reasons were? Possibly not rational, possibly merely about self-preservation. Who knows? Are you seriously suggesting that some of your family would have contested the mother's decision here? Would you have been comfortable with enforced contact against the mother's wishes?

If we want to put children first we need to obligate the adults around them, not give them rights over the children. Authority over children should only be so that those obligations can be met, not for the benefit of the person with authority.

I do agree that there are some parents who aren't brilliant parents, but I don't think parenting overall is improved by giving other people rights to their children nor by micromanaging certain parts of parenting. If parents aren't good enough they need a social worker providing support and guidance to get them up to scratch (or, if that is not sufficient, the children removing). Allowing people who don't get on with the parents to go to court to force their own way on the family is just another way of undermining parents, who have a hard enough job as it is.

I don't see anyway for courts to generally be better judges of the nuances of relationships and the potential payoffs and costs than the people involved are.

@Armchairanachist I am very sorry for your situation. Now your niece is 18 would you want to make contact with her? Could you do so without expressing anger at her mum?

I think this law is very badly proposed. I don't think adults have a right to relationships with children because they are biologically related to them. However, I can see how hurtful it must be when family relationships break down and it seems one person isn't happy to continue a relationship.

^^ This

(My post meant to agree with BoomBoomsCousin )

We much later found out it was because his girlfriend was at his funeral. How would you feel to lose your son suddenly aged 19 and your only grandchild? My mum did.

@Armchairanachist "We much later found out it was because his girlfriend was at his funeral" that is a shame that she felt she could control her daughter's relationship with her extended family because her ex's girlfriend was also at the funeral.

Of course your mum would feel incredibly hurt to have the additional sorrow of losing a grandchild as well as a son. But I still think it is very difficult for the law to require parents to allow their own parents or parents in law, or wider relatives, to have contact rights to their own children.

We not only lost her, she lost us. Where were the child's rights? She had no advocate.

@Armchairanachist Do you know where she is, would you consider making contact? I would really think about whether you are still angry at her mother and whether you could put that behind you.

To put this into context our son is adopted. We were offered the chance to stay in touch (letter box contact) with one of his relatives. We asked to do this, but the relative would not. So I do appreciate the significance of relatives.

However, I do feel the legal parents of a child should have the right to make such decisions, which is why I see this proposed law as highly problematic.

Agree 100% my in laws feel they are entitled to anything my partner has just because they are related

Here is a transcript of the House of Commons debate in case anyone wants to read it:
hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/2018-05-02/debates/4532C0A2-3EDC-4113-BB87-C303A16763BC/AccessRightsToGrandparents

I agree with pp who have said that where there is a decision to go no contact, there is almost always a very good reason for it although it might be difficult to prove if it's emotional abuse over a long period. Huddlestone says that it's often a minor tiff that snowballs and that is maybe how it has been presented to him, but I think he won't be understanding that it is often the straw that has broken the camel's back.

It's being presented as a way to make the legal system more streamlined. If this is all it does then I guess I'm in favour (although I can't really comment as I have basically zero knowledge of family law), but this talk of having an assumption that children should have contact with grandparents is concerning. I speak as someone with a toxic grandmother who I have decided to have no contact with for the last ten years or so. Fortunately she doesn't know that I've got married and am pregnant otherwise I suppose she could apply for access to her great grandchild under this law too!

#IBelieveTheParents

This is far too interfering. If a GP wants access they need to sort it out with their child who is the parent. It should have nothing to do with the courts. If parents are not looking after their DC the GPs should be calling social services.

This sounds like the crazy forced inheritance laws that they have in Denmark. My SIL just lost her DH earlier this year. We paid off her mortgage a couple of years ago not thinking about the impact this could have. Turns out that we have had to go to court to explain that we paid off the mortgage for my SILs benefit so she wouldn't have to move otherwise she would need to sell and give 50% to her step sons. Thanks to forced inheritance rules his sons automatically share his estate. They are now joint owners of her home and issued a summons for her to sell so they could get their money. My SIL has been really sick since he passed away spending a lot of time in hospital. This is the last thing she needs.

Boomers, eh?
Sorry to be pedantic about this again but baby boomers were post war children.
I am only in my early 50s and could very easily be a GP.
My DCs GP is only a few years older than me.
My own parent is a baby boomer though.

This is disgusting. My MIL is emotionally abusive, manipulative and highly toxic and damaging to us - there is no way in hell she should be allowed access, in any way shape or form, other than very few and far between visits if we choose them

GPs will still have to apply for leave from the courts wont they?
They will also have to pay.

not a comfort to everyone but may reassure others.

Huddleston needs to look into adult estrangement from parents / parental estrangement from adult children and really understand what he's talking about.

If he looks at the Stand Alone website and research and consults with the people there, or read the Issendai blog posts on estrangement from parents or adult children he might have a better idea of what a 'minor tiff' means to the adults who have chosen to estrange themselves and their children from their own parents/grandparents.

All too offen in the cases where adult children have chosen estrangement, their parents claim not to know why or say they've been accused of lots of things but never been told what's really wrong.

Those things they're accused of ARE what's really wrong, they just don't want to admit it.

My PILs would say and have said "We don't know what we've done" to us, but we have told them until we are blue in the face. They've been cruel, they've been pushy, they've been rude, they've ignored our boundaries, they've basically stalked me, they've tried to spilt us up, they've told lies. The list is endless.

As well as the cruel comments they made when our children died (that comment about giving birth was made three days after our son was stillborn) they've also told us that DH's brother was in hospital because of a hereditary disease that could kill him.

They wouldn't tell us what the disease was, so we had no way to look into it and find out anything about it. They made excuse after excuse not to tell us.

They let us think that for weeks before SIL accidently let it slip that he had actually overdosed on drink and amphetamines. Obviously we were worried for BIL but we also thought that this made up disease might be the reason why our son was stillborn, why DH's cousin also had a stillborn baby at the same stage in pregnancy as we had lost our son, we thought DH might have the disease and we thought DS might have the disease.

It was especially cruel to make us believe that. We finally thought we had our baby safe and well and they chose to lie to us about a made up hereditary disease that could be fatal and made us think we might lose him after all.

Who lies to bereaved parents to make them think their other child might die? Who lies and claims one of their children might have a fatal illness?

They know what they've done. It just doesn't suit them to admit it.

So our estrangement, that took years to happen, years of conversations with them in which we begged them to stop torturing us with cruel words and lies, was not a 'minor tiff', they do know what they've done, it didn't happen overnight or come out of the blue, and we do not need peole like Huddleston believing their lies and advocating for them and their rights.

We were on the point of taking our son to the doctor to ask for blood tests for some mystery blood disorder that doesn't even exist because of them. They should never have any rights to a grandchild they subjected to that.

There was a huge hoo-ha over this a few years back? But the GP had to prove they'd had a good relationship with the grandchildren previously to gain access. It couldn't be used willy nilly. So more for situations where for some reason a GP may be unfairly removed from a childs life. I.e. dad fucks off, mum (dil) won't allow contact even though GP have looked after the kids one day a week for years and that kind of thing.

Or is this different?

Everyone. Please don't just talk about this on mumsnet. Please do what @Hygge has done. Write to your MP and tell your side of the story, if you are on any type of support group or online community, please spread the word and get as many people as possible actively opposing this in a way that has a chance of preventing it. (Hygge I remember your previous threads, I can imagine how terrifying this is for you, it is too for me!)

What @Seniorcitizen1 said👆🏻. My ex has behaved despicably but I wouldn't rob my children of their grandparents and aunties and uncles. I realise that if it is the grandparents/other relatives that aren't behaving well this may not apply though. Children's needs first though (whatever that results in and in my not too distant future it could be a bloody bitter pill to swallow), that's the price you pay for having them,

This is very beneficial with kids whose parents have MH issues. During her manic episodes my sister actively goes to block access to her kids when she isn’t on meds; they go hungry, unwashed, and it takes weeks to go through SS to get access. I went to court to get named guardian because I wasn’t guaranteed access and had to fight for it even though she was abusing them; automatic right to access would have made the whole process easier.

It’s bad enough trying to sort out two adults who have rights to a child.

It's always worth pointing out that it's not about the rights of the adults, but of the children.