Grandparents rights?

[Asiama]

My narc mother, who I am Nc with, is sending me requests to spend time alone with my children (newborn and toddler). I am not responding to these requests and there is absolutely no chance I will agree to this.

However, I have just read the link below and I'm scared that if she goes down the legal route, she may get access. Is that correct? My mother was emotionally abusive but if I have to prove it, it will be my word against hers. I want to protect my children from potential abuse.

raydensolicitors.co.uk/areas/grandparents-legal-rights-uk/

Unless your mother has played a very significant role in your child's life by providing a large amount of care, your mother would never have a leg to stand on. Grandparents do not have a legal right to see their grandchildren. The exception to this is very, very rare. You have nothing to worry about. Keep completely ignoring her, and do not respond to any of her messages. In fact, you should block her.

What kind of contact has your mother had with your dc so far? Generally, if there had been a close and loving relationship, perhaps with granny providing childcare while you worked, she'd be in with a reasonable chance of at least supervised contact. If no meaningful relationship, she's less chance.

(I am not a lawyer)

That link is marketing and the right to request an order is to maintain an existing relationship.

I had the same threats. My mother had no role in my children's lives, she went to a solicitor and requested access, I said no and that was that.

My understanding is that there needs to have been a significant relationship for at least 2 years for contact to even be considered in court.

I have heard about a couple of people who got scared by the threats of court, granted access and then got onto the situation where they were entitled to contact, so just keep ignoring her.

She can’t even take you to court. She would have to apply to the court first for permission to take you to court for contact. Since she’s never had contact she would not get permission to take it further.

It's designed to protect significant ongoing relationships with grandparents following divorce. It's not rights for grandparents either. It's protection of the children's right to enjoy a significant relationship that is ongoing in the event of a divorce.

It's not designed for grandparents who have never seen their grandchildren to force a meeting. There is no appetite to enforce a ruling against a parent either. What are they going to do? Jail a parent (depriving the child of a more important caregiver)?

Don't set a precedent.

My mother was estranged from her family due to what was considered (by the family) an unwise marriage. It was back in the 1940s when social class still mattered a great deal. I did not meet my grandmother until I was 4 years old, when one of my aunts took me to see her. Thereafter I had regular meetings with her.

My parents (in particular my father) were not happy about my seeing so much of my grandmother. However she had threatened them with solicitors and being working class and uneducated my parents backed off and reluctantly allowed access. They were scared off by the possibility of court action.

I later became very close with my grandmother - far closer than I was with my parents. She did far more both financially and emotionally to help and support me than they did.

Thank you all, that's reassuring. My mother has not met my newborn and my toddler perhaps 3 times per year. They don't know each other.

@memberofthewedding I'm glad it worked out well for you. My mother is abusive to anyone she gets close to and as a result no one in our extended family is in touch with her, and she has no friends. There won't be a happy ending for us. I went LC / NC after my first child was born, as she ramped up her unpleasant behaviour.

There needs to have been unsupervised access for at least a year or 2...for example if the dc and you had lived with her, or she provided long term child care.. Or the dc had slept there regularly without you. IE a relationship that was significant to the dc and would be detrimental to them for it to end.. She has nothing but threats to give op. Don't give her a second thought.

Grandparents haven't got any legal rights. Stop worrying. She's a silly woman.

I would say otherwise, but not in your circumstances op. I say this because I am a grandparent carer with my gc's placed with me through the courts. Not because I wanted to take them from their mother but because they needed a stable, decent and loving home in which to grow up in and flourish. The first gc was by agreement and the second was sadly, forced with children's services involvement.

To complicate matters, gc1's dad applied for contact and got it. I had happily agreed contact until he became unreliable and aggressive. His parents got contact alongside him - I believe it was for supervisory purposes. Gs never stayed in his dad's home ever and I believe his own parents were afraid. Sadly again it went back to court continually because his dad's violence escalated to gbh.

She has not played a significant part in your child's life op. I would ignore her and if you get any legal letters, do remember that they are being paid to write and ask you for contact. Sometimes such letters can appear like an "instruction". They are not.

Thank you all and @ElsieMc for sharing your experiences. My mother won't be looking to take them away or even have them visit at her home. Right now she is asking to meet them on her own for two hours in a car park near us.

Did you actually read your link?
Grandparents have no rights in England and Wales to have contact with grandchildren. Only someone with parental responsibility has legal recourse to demand contact (i.e. parent that has left family home) and a grandparent would have to seek a judge's permission to even apply.
The only way it would be permitted is if a child had lived with their grandparent for a significant part of their life (because in the case of the family I know mum is an addict and lives between rehab centres, hostels and the streets, and dad was in jail for violent offences. GPs applied for court order and residential order for grandchildren who would have been at risk with dad).
This clearly isn't the case here.

Let her threaten. A solicitor will happily take her money to tell her she has no legal recourse.
My mother threatened and threatened me over this (she had never even seen or met any of my children) so I read up on the legal situation, and stopped worrying. It was very cathartic to just say "you do that" to her, knowing a solicitor would soon put her right.
Apparently it was criminal that I wasn't educating them in her religion and I wasn't giving them access to good music I kid you not! This was at a time when my eldest was studying every Saturday at a junior department of a conservatoire. Some people are just literally batshit crazy

Do not pander to her. No meet ups. Not even for a glimpse of your dc...
It's your duty as their dm to protect them. Keeping them away from toxic people is geh right thing to do. Or she will keep at you for more and more... A dm with great mh is what your dc need. Not a toxic dgm.

As already stated she has no rights. She can apply for permission to take you to court, but unless she could demonstrate an established relationship, she won't even get permission to do that let alone take it any further.

What is really important now is that you don't capitulate to her demands thinking you'll let her see the kids a bit in return for her promising not to take you to court.

Stay LC/NC and ignore her threats. Don't respond at all.

nyoman

I think that a grandparent could, following a divorce, force ongoing contact if they could prove that they had been seeing the child for a significant length of time on a regular basis without having parental responsibility. I know it's happened.

Yes, but that isn't the situation here, is it?

My children have not been seeing them on a regular basis. My mother has had no input into their lives and hasn't provided childcare. There is no relationship, I doubt they would recognise her in the street. I intend to keep it that way.

Thank you for putting my mind at rest.

I had to check that I was on the legal board when I saw the responses - people do type up a lot of guff.

Grandparents go to court on a regular basis and very regularly get contact with their grandchildren, whether they have met them before or not. I am not saying OP, that your mother WILL get contact, but I am saying that it is not the impossibility that so many of the non-lawyers on this thread have asserted to you.

You are not obligated to respond to solicitors letters, they have no more legal force than your mother writing to you directly. But, if you ignore them, then you are very likely to find that an application has been issued in court.

Yes, this will first of all deal with the grandmother's permission, which she needs to achieve before the substantive application is reviewed, but this is almost always done for child arrangements at the FHDRA (first hearing), it will be the first matter discussed, and I have rarely seen such permission refused unless there are extremely compelling reasons to deny it. This is the point, OP, where you will need to raise your mother's conduct, why you don't have contact with her and why you do not want her to have contact with the children. If your reasons are compelling enough, the court may refuse permission - but it's unlikely.

What is most likely to happen is that permission will be given and the issues you raise re abusive conduct will be investigated further by way of a s7 welfare report whereby CAFCASS or social services if you've had recent involvement. This report will investigate the allegations and do background checks and make recommendations to the court as to what the court should order. It may be indirect contact - grandmother allowed to send letters/cards a couple of times a year, and you may be asked to send photos back. Or it could be supervised contact in a contact centre, or similar. It will depend entirely on the outcome of the court's investigations and the court's decision as to what is in the best interests of the child.

To be clear, I am not saying your mother in particular will get permission, or that she will get a favourable order, but I am saying that this application type is not rare, and it is not rare for grandparents to get contact with grandchildren, even when they do not have a current established relationship.

*whereby CAFCASS or social services if you've had recent involvement, will investigate....

@JustAnotherLawyer2 thank you. This is how I had initially understood the situation, which is why I was worried.

We have never had any involvement with any agencies like social services, so any investigation would be my word against her word. From experience she would either deny everything or say that I have misunderstood. My father will back her up. There is no tangible evidence. How would a court view this?

That's terrifying.

[quote Asiama]@JustAnotherLawyer2 thank you. This is how I had initially understood the situation, which is why I was worried.

We have never had any involvement with any agencies like social services, so any investigation would be my word against her word. From experience she would either deny everything or say that I have misunderstood. My father will back her up. There is no tangible evidence. How would a court view this?[/quote]
Courts decide on the balance of probabilities. This involves looking at the evidence (if any) and considering the credibility of the witnesses.

Thanks @prh47bridge

How do they assess credibility? My mother is a churchgoer and comes across so lovely, you would never know what she is really like.

I agree this is really terrifying! I feel like if they do decide to take a legal route there is a good chance they would get their wish because I have absolutely no evidence to show how horrible they really are.

There isn't a simple answer to that. It is to do with how they present their evidence, whether their evidence is internally consistent, whether it is consistent with other evidence such as documents, whether it is consistent with what they have said on other occasions and so on.