Should grandparents have the right to access their grandchildren if the parents don't want this?

[Life2Short4Nonsense]

Came across a discussion about the rights of grandparents to see the grandchildren if this goes against the parents' wishes.

Should grandparents be able to use the courts to get access to their grandchildren or should the parents be able to decide, as long as they are fit parents?

YABU: Grandparents should have the right to have access, unless a judge decides otherwise.

YANBU: The parents should decide, unless the parents are unfit to parent.

I believe my MIL to be a narcissist. An actual narcissist, not just throwing that word around because she’s hard work.

The psychological damage she’s done to DH as the guilt she puts on him if she doesn’t get her own way is awful. She claims to be ‘loving’ but it’s not love, it’s control. I don’t want her causing the same psychological abuse on DD that she does to DH.

She’s constantly kicking up a fuss to DH and to everyone who will listen that we’re denying her from being a loving grandmother to DD As she hates our boundaries. When DH moved in with me (2 hours away) she was inconsolable. She wanted to see DH a minimum of three times a week and me twice a week. Apparently I should have attended a double date type evening during the week and Sunday lunch - that was her compromise and if we couldn’t agree to that as a minimum effort we shouldn’t move away. Oh, and when we had children she wanted to do the school run three times a week as a minimum. Us moving away would be denying her from being a grandmother.

Fast forward to actually falling pregnant, we thought we were losing the baby (at 8 weeks) and went for a private scan. She wanted an apology from me before she acknowledged the scan photo of the healthy baby for not including her in the scan.

She hates having ‘supervised’ access to our 8 month old baby. If she could go to court to get unsupervised, regular contact she would. I’m sure she’s already been to a solicitor to see what rights she has.

As the law stands your parents would have no chance in court.

The only time grandparents can gain court ordered access (or even permission to go to court for it) is if they can show a strong relationship with their grandchild and that it would be in the child’s best interests for that to continue.

A child they have never met isn’t one that they can show that.

So my grandparents, who I lived with because my parents were abusive, would have been able to go to court (under the current law) to maintain our relationship if we’d had to go back to our parents. Which is right as it would have been in our best interest.

Whereas my father never could have with my children as he never met them. Same with your parents.

This👆

Before I gave birth to my son, we told my MIL that we wouldn't go to her house as long as she was smoking indoors, if she was to start smoking outside, we would allow son to visit. We made it clear she was more than welcome to come and visit us at our house (5 minutes away) or go for lunch with us, park, walks, softplay etc.

She flew off the handle, repeatedly called me a c*nt on social media. Said my son wasn't my husbands' child. Said she didn't care about me or our baby, just her own son. Tried to turn me against my own family by saying they'd called me names at my wedding which they hadn't. Goes around telling everyone that I refuse her access to her grandson. Tells everyone I had PND (which I didn't) and I won't allow baby round to her house due to my crippling anxiety (not true). Told my husband to leave me because I'm controlling and tried everything she could to break down our marriage. After all this, she threatened legal action as she apparently had rights to her grandson, which according to her wasn't actually her grandson anyway as he's not her sons child. 🤔 I said ok, go for it. She'd met him twice briefly in a year and a half and had caused no end of upset and hurt for our family throughout my sons life. We never received any court documents or communications in regards to legal action. There's more, but off the top of my head I can't even remember the whole saga.

In the end, she came knocking on our door to speak to my husband, he wasn't at home but I invited her in to talk, I said we'd wipe the slate clean but I said this has to be it, we don't go back to that awful time. We start fresh and that has to be that. She came round to ours a few times to see my son and it all seemed pleasant.

Then a month later, my husbands birthday came around. I messaged her telling her we were going out for a meal and we'd be in at X time so she's more than welcome to come round then, also suggested getting together with his family at the weekend so everyone could see our son and we could all have a catch up and a few drinks. My husband wouldn't have got in contact at all if I hadn't have text her. I got a whole tirade back telling me not to tell her when she can come and see her own son, that I'm controlling, some really nasty messages in all. I just said, ok, I'm sorry that's the way you feel.

Neither me, my husband or my son have had any contact since and that was over 12 months ago. She had a month in my sons 3 years of life where we had what I thought was a budding relationship and then she reverted back to exactly who she really is.

I don't think she deserves any contact with our son. I made it clear to my husband, if he wanted to maintain that relationship and go and visit her with DS then I wouldn't have any issue with that, but he doesn't want to. I learnt the hard way why he was so low contact with his family in the first place.

Wrong
Grandparents can apply to the crt for permission to apply for access. They can't just apply for access as a parent would. 1st they must prove that they already have on-going relationship with regular visitation, then if a crt gives permission they can go to crt for access and a judge will decide if its beneficial to the child to resume contact with the Grandparents or not. If, however, the grandparents don't have any existing relationship with the child they won't get a hearing.

Grandparents rights should only matter in cases like where there’s social services involvement because the parents can’t/won’t look after the kids.

If the parents and grandparents don’t get along then it’s best that the kids are shielded from the animosity and don’t see the grandparents. As a pp said, parents know what their parents are like and will generally act in their kids best interests.

My kids don’t see their grandparents and it stopped the cycle of abuse and dysfunction. It’s the best thing that I did for them and when I read stories on here about kids being forced to see toxic extended family, I am proud that I took a stand.

In general relatives do not have any right to contact with children.

There are exceptions - basically where relatives have been acting as parents for a substantial period of time eg an aunt has looked after a child while dad was in prison for years, etc etc.

I have good reasons for my children not seeing one grandparent. This grandparent is a charming manipulator and good at playing the downtrodden older person victim to an unkind woman (me) who is just being a meanie. However the truth is very different and I reserve the right to protect my children from a dangerous person. Grandparents should never ever have rights unless deemed to do so by a local authority for child protection reasons

No, Grandparents shouldn’t have rights. We have extremely toxic relatives and are NC. The thing about toxic relatives is they damage every member of the family one way or another. I think if my parents had rights they would just want access to drive a wedge between me and my DC. No good would come if it for my DC.
No one is going to cut off kind Grandparents or supportive Grandparents. Cut off Grandparents are always cut off with good reason.

It was very important to both DH and I that DS has a good relationship with his grandparents and extended family because we both had that growing up and still do.
I hope we raise DS so that he will want a relationship with us all when he's older and want his future family to have us too.

However I fully support parents having the authority to ban negative, dangerous or abusive people from their children's lives.

Absolutely this!

I'm currently going through absolute hell with my adult daughter. I haven't seen my 3 grandbabies age 9mo-2 and 3 in 4 weeks now. I love them, was used to having them every week and seeing them every other day. But my daughter has a personality disorder and thrives on punishing me when she feels I've done something wrong. This time, I raised concerns as she's been very publicly telling everybody that she can't cope with the 3 children under 3 that she already has and announced she is pregnant. Claiming to be single, On benefits. In the Middle of a breakdown. And she's keeping the baby. I suggested it might be wise to put herself and her 3 children first and consider an abortion . So now I'm banned from my grandkids. This is probably the 5th time since the eldest was born? It's getting worse as I'm becoming used to it so now I don't grovel and beg and she's lost her power over me. I've almost become numb to the entire thing to protect myself from her emotional terrorism. My DH still sees the kids for 20-30 minutes twice a week to check in on them and checks in with her daily. But I can't even begin to put into words how much this hurts me. I would die for those children and she uses them as pawns and openly weaponises them like they are tools in a game.

I've done everything I can to try and help her take responsibility for her own choices and behaviour. She's a compulsive liar. She's abusive to her own partner and I suspect the children occasionally but there is absolutely nothing I can do.

So yes. Grand parents, ones with an established relationship, should be able to continue seeing the grand children if the parents fall out. Right now is happy see them in a contact centre, a park, anywhere.

Parenting is hard enough with the input of interested and engaged grandparents. I highly doubt parents are denying their children a relationship with a functional healthy grandparent.

But not always.

Our neighbours spent a lot of time looking after their grandchildren, but when their daughter (DCs mother) died suddenly their son in law wouldn't let them see them.

Needless to say as soon as he found a new partner and had another baby he couldn't wait to get back in touch.

Grandparents should have the right to apply to the family court if access is being unfairly denied. This is not the same thing as an automatic right to access.

Under the current rules your neighbours would be granted permission to apply for access as they have a relationship with them and would most likely be granted access as it would be in the best interests of the child/children. Whereas my abusive parents can't even get a hearing and if by some miracle an idiot let them any family crt judge would laugh them out of crt as both of them have criminal records for child abuse.
The law is fine how it is just now

I think grandparents should have the right to apply to court.

But not an automatic right.

I have seen grandchildren held over grandparents heads to manipulate them and it’s incredibly damaging to all involved. Especially, where the grandparents regularly take care of the grandchild and have a strong bond.

I have experienced really damaging grandparents as well. So can see both sides.

My brother sexually abused my sister and me. My sister for decades me for about a year. My father’s reaction was disgusting to say the least when he found out. Basically he tried to push that it was normal and forgivable that was if it did actually happen. My mother is extremely emotionally manipulative and will go along with my father but mainly because her views largely align with his. My father in law beat his wife and abused her in every way for their entire marriage.

Other than my mother in law none of the other grandparents see my children. The grandparents in question of course think we are the problem, my kids did for a while too.

If it were down to my DH the kids would still be involved with these people as he doesn’t understand the implications but I convinced him and eventually over time they, DH and kids understood my reasons for ending the relationships.

Two people choose to have a child. Why should people who are not part of that decision, be given rights? It's not their child - ultimately parents should be allowed to raise their children as they see fit, so long as the children are being looked after properly.

There are already mechanisms in place for grandparents who have been instrumental in raising children to obtain access rights if a parent just cuts them off. But they have to prove an existing important relationship iirc.

this controversy is always a HOT TOPIC over on Gransnet, the forceful push to see gc mostly from the parents of the partner/husband exhibiting minimal emotional intelligence with maximum belligerence

My father raped me for years, my mother knew, blamed me for it and let him carry on. Why the fuck would I let them anywhere near my child?

This.
Parents have the responsibility to manage their children's lives in the best interests of the child.

However, some parents forget this.

Some grandparents do also.

That's why we have courts.

I don't think grandparents have a 'right' to spend time with anyone, nor do I think they should do nothing if they think the children are being denied a relationship with their family for no good reason.

In my experience, parents usually have a good reason to deny spending time arrangements.

No.

Unless there is some necessity for SS involvement and they can provide stability

It's nice to have 'good' grandparents but children can manage fine without them

I’d not let my parents near my children for any reason. One is a violent alcoholic, the other was an abusive narcissist (in the truest sense of the word). Threatened to undermine my parenting choices years before I had them (such as ‘I’d not raise my children religious’ ‘well I’ll get them baptised and you’d never know it happened’). The latter became a moot point as they died without meeting my eldest.

It makes me sad, I had wonderful grandparents and wish my children had the same relationships in their life. But being a grandparent is the reward for being a good (not perfect!) parent. It’s not a right.

As one of the parents of the child has had the experience of being parented by the grandparent, they are usually the best placed to judge if contact with the grandparent would be beneficial to the child.

Of course, sometimes, loving grandparents are unjustly prevented from seeing their grandchildren. That is tragic for the grandparent, but it would also be tragic if a child was forced to have contact with an abusive grandparent and suffered as a result.

Human beings are not perfect, but by and large, parents hold the wellbeing of their children as a paramount concern. Unless proven to be unfit parents, then the courts should not be involved in these decisions.

Absolutely not. Not in my case anyway. I am sure there are situations where the parent of the child is doing it out of spite or something but in most cases I would assume and hope it is for very good reasons.