Contact with granddaughter

[Paulinehenry64]

My daughter has decided that I can’t see my granddaughter because I don’t agree with her decision to stop my granddaughter and great niece from seeing each other because my daughter has fallen out with her cousin. I have told her it’s not fair to bring the children into there argument (the children are aged 3 and 7)I am now having to apply to the courts to see my granddaughter who I have had every weekend for the last 2 years and also help with childcare while they were at work and picked up from nursery a few times too. wondering if anyone might know if I will be successful in the court process I really don’t want my granddaughter to feel abandoned by me we have the most wonderful and close bond

Going to court is hardly going to encourage a positive relationship with your granddaughter. You should never have involved yourself in the rift between your dd and her cousin. We don't speak to a sibling and there's no way in hell I would facilitate a relationship between our kids and sibling's kids. If you want to have a relationship with your granddaughter you should focus your energy on building bridges with your dd and accept that she has her reasons for falling out with her cousin. Going to court will just add fuel to the fire and no doubt will seriously damage your chances of ever having a positive relationship with dd and granddaughter again.

Grandparents do not unfortunately have the same rights as, say, absent parents in this situation.

I think that whatever your views on your daughter’s actions, you have to respect them if you wish to continue to see your grandkids. It will be disruptive for them if they hear you arguing with your daughter, and also she might be concerned that you would allow her kids to see your great niece against her wishes when you are looking after them.

As I said, whatever your views, your daughter had final say on this matter

Going to court is going to make your daughter hate you. Do you really want that sort of relationship with your daughter?

I appreciate you don't want your grand-daughter to feel abandoned by you, but what about your daughter? Does she not feel abandoned? And did you not have a bond?

What you have effectively told her is that her decisions as a parent are not important to you, and you have a closer bond with your grand-daughter than her. That must be crushing to find out about your mother.

Was this all really worth it over a disagreement between 2 cousins?

I'd suggest your best option is backing down completely, apologising unreservedly and saying you have completely overstepped and realise that she is an amazing parent and you will keep out of her relationships. Focus on your relationship with your daughter.

I'd just leave it. If you have been providing such full on child care support, chances are they won't last long without you....all those lovely weekends off to suddenly having to parent full time and manage wrap around nursery pick ups etc.

Give her time to cool off and be conciliatory when there is a chance to make up but be firm that when you are doing childcare for them, it's not up to them to stipulate who else is at your house...I assume you do childcare for the niece as well?

Its amusing how you say it's not fair to bring the DC into the arguement. How exactly does dragging them all through court help?

I would never forgive you for this if you were my mother.

If you were my mum I'd never forgive you and you definitely wouldn't be seeing my children again.

She's made a decision which has nothing to do with you and you need to respect that.

You are about to waste a LOT of
Money and get no where at all

Whilst grandparents have no automatic legal rights to contact people can and do go to court on this issue. You would have to demonstrate that if would be in your GD's best interests to have contact with you. It does seem pretty unfair of your daughter to cut you off when you were seeing her every weekend, however as others have said, can you not try and build bridges with your daughter first?

Or you could just grovellingly apologise to your daughter and acknowledge that you were in the wrong to ignore her decision as a parent.

I agree it's sad to stop the child seeing her 2nd cousin but that's her mother's choice and you need to respect it.

This stance only further demonstrates that you feel that you have a right to be involved in parenting decisions which is an overstep of acceptable boundaries for most. You have made it clear to your daughter that you dont care what she thinks nor do you respect her as a mother to your DGD and as such she no longer trusts you to respect her wishes. It's a shame but going to court will achieve nothing. PIL tried this with DHs ex and it achieved absolutely nothing aside from 18 months of non contact because threatening to take someone to court does little to help relationships. You dont have to agree with the decision but you do need to let your daughter know that you accept it. It sounds like there is a huge back story here that you have skipped over. Exactly what has happened to get to this point?

DD (8 months) sees PIL weekly facilitated by me but I now refuse for her to see her cousins and their parents on DHs side. This is after several meetings where the cousins bullied another young child (hitting, pushing, teasing) whilst the parents ignored it and got drunk. They then tried to pick DD up whilst drunk and couldn't understand whilst i was upset and refused. I simply won't put myself or DD through it. The cousins then demanded to hold DD whilst running around the room screaming. I'm sure my PIL would say I'm unfair to deny contact because they skip over all of this but I do ask that they respect my decision until DD is older. Ultimately she is my main concern

If you genuinely want to see your gd stay out of your dds decision around other child. It's none of your business and l say that kindly. You have no say in that.
If you treasure the time with your gd apologise to your dd, tell her she can make any decisions she likes and hopefully that will sort it.
But l have to say ye sound like a pair of drama queens falling out with people and make big decisions about contact.
Like mother like daughter!!!
And NO to court or you'll be out of that childs life forever.

You're confused about your position in law. You don't have parental responsibility, so you can't argue for contact. Presently, you have exactly as many rights as any random Joe in the street re this child.

If you want to see your grandchild, repair your relationship with their mother. You could start by respecting her parenting decisions.

If simply looking after a child gave people rights for contact, our childminder could apply

I have tried all of the advice that has been offered court is the very last resort my daughter is very controlling even with her partner it’s her way or no way I have respected her wishes and stopped my great niece from coming to mine while I have my granddaughter but my great niece thinks my daughter hates her and when I told her the effect it’s having on her my daughter said she doesn’t care and stopped my contact for raising this concern (my daughter and her cousin fell out because someone else told a lie on her cousin and my daughter is too stubborn to apologise for the mistakes)

Go for it then

My daughter keeps using my granddaughter as a pawn/weapon to get her way anyone who has a different opinion to her or her partner are stopped from having any contact with my granddaughter. 1,My youngest daughter has left home and now is band from seeing her niece because my eldest daughter does not think she should of left home. 2, she has fallen out with her cousin and can’t remember why but now she won’t let her cousin or her cousins daughter have contact with my granddaughter. 3, I have told her she needs to stop using my granddaughter as a weapon as it’s not fair on my granddaughter to form close healthy relationships and then be left wondering why she can’t see them anymore she may feel abandoned now I have been band from seeing her too (for the 3rd time) I have tried to talk and sort things out even tried to get her partners mum to help but she scared as she may loose contact too have also tried mediation but they refused that too so feel court is the only way to resolve this and get regular contact with my granddaughter back for her sake (I have had her every weekend for past 2 years) and I know she will be wondering where I have gone. there is a lot more incidents that she goes over the top with even giving advice about eczema cream was a problem will the courts help to resume contact

"will the courts help to resume contact" No.

Your daughter may well be a horrible person who is totally controlling

However it still comes across that you would rather spend time with anyone, than her. Your great niece's opinion is more important to you than your daughter's. You are closer to the cousin, the great-niece and the grand-daughter than her. I am struggling to picture a lovely daughter who wants to be told about how they have hurt the feelings of a v distant relative who is also 7 years old.

Realistically, how can you maintain a court-ordered relationship with a grand-child, when both parents are having nothing to do with you? For years and years? It isn't going to happen, even if you are granted it, your daughter will just not turn up and you will be fighting forever.

Make up with your daughter, whatever it takes.

A bit of a drip feed there OP but I still don't see the court doing anything as you have no legal right to see the child. Could you try more of a carrot approach? Try to be helpful and understanding rather than coming from the stance i want to see DGD, I have a right to do so and she will miss me which will likely get your DDs back up. Couldn't you offer to watch DGD for a couple of hours whilst DD goes shopping or whatever stressing how you want to help her however you can. You know what will be most helpful to her whether it's time off, a few nice bits of food, clothes for DGD whatever. Use this to crack the door open just a little

Cross-posted with you.

Just step away from the drama.

Your daughter knows she has you all hanging by a string to see her grand-daughter. It's powerful - but also awful - no-one wants to see her.

She clearly has her own issues but whatever you do, you need to minimize drama and keep the channels to your daughter open and give the message you want to see her. This minimizes how much she can use the grand-child as a pawn, plus also giving her the attention she is blatantly crying out for.

Whatever the problems and fall outs are, I understand you are trying to mend things and keep everyone happy. However the more you try the more damage I think you will do. Rather than go to court, don’t you think you would be better off taking a step back and leave your DD to her own choices made? If she decides she does need the help you have so regularly given let her come to you.

Going to court, even if the DD really is being unreasonable, will most likely get you nowhere, and would probably have the result of her cutting you off for ever.

While you can, theoretically, apply for leave of the court to make an application for a child arrangements order, the likelihood of you being granted contact from the details you have given is miniscule, and you risk alienating your child even further by the attempt.

The court would want to know that ordering contact wouldn't disrupt the child to such a degree that it outweighed the benefit of spending time with you (if they decide that it would be beneficial to spend time with you, that is).

If your daughter says that she can't get along with you and facilitating contact will cause her undue distress and impact upon the emotional wellbeing of your grandchild, that will be very difficult for you to argue against.

The kinds of cases where the benefit of contact with grandparents would be considered to outweigh the emotional distress of contact against the parent's wishes, involve things like children in temporary foster care (where the parent is in prison, for example), or situations where a child has been living with the gp full time for several years only for the parent to rock up and whip them away.

I'm sorry. You sound like you love your grandchild and it is a shame for her to miss out on your affection. However, you don't sound like you like your daughter, and your relationship is currently poor. I know that you say that you have tried everything - and your daughter could very well be completely unreasonable - but there isn't any empathy for your daughter's perspective coming through in your posts. Perhaps this is something you haven't tried that could make a world of difference? You don't have to agree with her to empathise with her. Her perspective can be completely unreasonable to you, the point is that you take it for a while in order to 'hear' her.

Notwithstanding what other posters have said about trying to mediate, apologise, go with the flow with the daughter's demands etc., if all that has failed, then court is the correct option.

Contrary to what some previous posters have said about having little to no chance of getting contact, the information the OP gives would indicate that it may well be in the child's best interests to have contact with her grandmother, and it is the child's best interests the court takes into consideration. As such, resuming some form of contact is likely to be the order the court makes.

Every time a grandparent asks for advice on going to court on here, even when that question is in Legal, people trot out the same statement 'grandparents have no rights'...but they, like anyone else who has a relationship with a child, DO have the right to make an application to the court for permission to apply for contact. In fact, these are no longer considered two separate applications as the C100 has a question which asks the applicant whether or not they require permission to apply and, in the vast majority of cases, the matter is listed for a first hearing and the first matter the court deals with is whether or not permission is granted. I have yet to deal with even one single case of a grandparent application where permission has been refused, even, for example, in the event of an eight year gap in contact between a grandfather and an 11 year old child...in that case the grandfather was awarded initial indirect contact and then face to face.

It's not helpful for people to google a bit and then make bold statements that do not reflect reality in the family courts.

OP, if, as you say, you have had such regular contact with your granddaughter for years, you are very likely to be provided with contact going forward. It is not likely to be to the extent that you currently have it (every weekend), but at least you'll see her. I would, however, suggest that you try your best to exhaust all other possibilities first - including apologising and sucking up the fact that you think your daughter dictates to everyone...whilst you may not agree with it, she does have the right to restrict contact to her child unless there is a court order in place.

Please don’t take legal action against your own child. How would you feel if it was your DD doing it to your GDD? I went NC with my DM and she even tried to file for adoption as we’d been living with her for 4 months whilst my boiler was broken, so my DD classed as resident with her. Luckily she realised I’d tear her head from her body if she ever put me through that!

Paulinehenry64

I wonder how much you and your daughter are alike personality wise.
As it seems that you both want things your own way.

Thank God for JustAnotherLawyer. ! It really rattles me that people with absolutely no idea of the law - rock up on these threads talking absolute bollocks ! - This is LEGAL NOT AIBU . !!

The OP has at no point asked any of you your moral opinion. She posted in legal to get a legal opinion. Which as you can see from the advice from an actual lawyer - is in direct contradiction to all the other advice posted. Really really unhelpful. As the legal advice is absolutely correct. An application from a grandparent who has had very regular contact for two years with a three year old grandchild is extremely unlikely not to be successful and if (as clearly stated by the OP) all other avenues including a request for mediation have been refused, this is indeed the correct way forward.