Grandparents – Maintaining A Relationship With Your Grandkids

Where there is a pre-existing relationship between children and grandparents – and the parents are acting unreasonably – the courts may step in.”
When the grandparents are expressly obstructed from seeing the grandchildren, a remedy might well be in sight thanks to earlier court rulings. Courts have stepped in for those cases where there’s a pre-existing positive relationship between the elders and the children that was blocked by a parent.
The point of the grandchild-grandparent interaction is all about the child. You go to court for the benefit of the grandchild. You don’t go because, as a grandparent, you think you have a right to see your grandchildren. Rather, it’s because your grandchildren should have the right to see you and know you.
The approach by the courts is to weigh parental autonomy with pro-contact by the grandparents. What usually occurs is a hybrid approach to balance the decision-making powers of the parent with the positive contact the child has with the grandparents.
Competing judicial approaches (parental autonomy vs grandparent pro-contact) make these cases difficult to predict outcomes.

To explore if your situation is amenable to court or other modes of resolution, call 1-888-389-3099 or Contact Gene C. Colman Family Law Centre