skip to Main Content

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

  • Grandparents should be peacemakers, not troublemakers: Colman
  • Courts need to be more ‘activist’ in protecting grandparent rights: Colman
  • Grandparents often ‘collateral damage’ in divorce
Back To Top