Ind. Law - More on "Grandparents testify in Indy to establish visitation rights"

Sunday, January 31, 2010
Ind. Law - More on "Grandparents testify in Indy to establish visitation rights"
Updating this ILB entry from Jan. 19, 2010, about SB 59 (which passed third reading in the Senate Jan. 25th with a vote of Yeas 44 and Nays 6), here is a letter published in the Jan. 30th Terre Haute Trib-Star, headlined "Intrusive expansion of visitation litigation", written by Karen A. Wyle, a Bloomington attorney:

Most Hoosiers have no idea that in Indiana, widowed, divorced and single parents can be sued for grandparent visitation. If such parents make the difficult decision that contact with a grandparent is bad for their child or even dangerous, a trial judge can overrule this decision. Now, bills are racing through the Indiana House and Senate that would undermine the parental authority of parents in intact families and subject them to the same litigation.

Grandparent visitation litigation is almost always a tragic and counterproductive mistake, with the child the principal victim. Litigation generally puts an end to any possibility of future improvement in relations between parent and grandparent. By so doing, it further reduces the chances of a healthy and beneficial relationship between grandparent and grandchild. If the grandparent wins visitation, the child will be in an ongoing emotional crossfire. The litigation itself places enormous emotional stress on the custodial family, and consumes financial resources that would otherwise have benefitted, even fed and clothed, the child at its center.

The proponents of these bills, HB 1055 and SB 59, express concern about grandparents and great-grandparents who step in to care for their grandchildren when the parents are unable to do so, only to be kept away from the children when the parents take up their role again. These concerns can be addressed through guardianship proceedings or statutes concerning de facto parenthood, or, where the parents are arguably unfit, via Child Protective Services. These bills reach far further.

The U.S. Supreme Court case of Troxel v. Granville, repeatedly recognized by the Indiana Court of Appeals, held that a parent’s fundamental constitutional right to raise his or her child includes the right to make decisions about contact between children and their grandparents (or other nonparents). Courts must, in any grandparent visitation dispute, start out by presuming that the parent’s decision to deny grandparent visitation was in the child’s best interests. Only if that presumption is decisively rebutted, by specific facts rather than generalizations about grandparental affection, may the court override the parent’s decision.

Our current grandparent visitation statute, I.C. 31-17-5, unfortunately makes no mention of these binding constitutional principles. The proposed bills not only would not correct this situation, but would greatly expand the scope of nonparent visitation litigation. Intact families who have not in any way involved the judicial system in their family lives could be thrust into the purgatory of visitation litigation.

The situations most often thought to require such intervention — where a single, divorced or widowed parent is unwilling to let the child continue a relationship with the parents of the noncustodial parent — would no longer be a prerequisite for a family’s being dragged into court.

Please — call or e-mail your state representative and senator immediately and tell them to oppose these bills. Contact Gov. Daniels and urge him to veto the bills if he receives them. Please do what you can to stop this well-intentioned, but harmful and intrusive expansion of nonparent visitation litigation.

Note that HB 1055 paased the House on Jan. 28, with a vote of 63-33.

Here are a number of other ILB entries mentioning grandparents visitation.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on January 31, 2010 08:17 AM
Posted to Indiana Law

http://indianalawblog.com/archives/2010/01/ind_law_more_on_233.html