Wednesday, September 28, 2016

Your Guide to Grandparent Rights

Families can splinter for a number of reasons: divorce, the death of a parent, drug or alcohol abuse, incarceration. When those situations occur, grandparents do have certain legal rights, and can seek visitation with grandchildren or even custody, but the relevant laws vary from state to state. Understanding your own basic rights can help ensure that your relationship with your grandchildren doesn't end even if the children's relationship with your adult child does.
The State of Grandparent Rights Grandparents in every state in the United States have rights, in some circumstances, to be awarded custody of their grandchildren or to be awarded court-mandated visitation with their grandchildren. Grandparents' rights are not constitutional in nature....Recognition of grandparents' rights by state legislatures is a fairly recent trend, and most of the statutes have been in effect for less than 35 years. Federal legislation may affect grandparents' rights, though these rights are based primarily on state law. Congress passed the Parental Kidnapping Prevention Act in 1980, which requires that each state give full faith and credit to child custody decrees from other states. Federal legislation passed in 1998 also requires that courts in each state recognize and enforce grandparental visitation orders from courts in other states. All states have adopted a version of the Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction and Enforcement Act (previously the Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction Act), which requires courts in the state where a child resides to recognize and enforce valid child custody orders from another state. Though the UCCJEA is not a federal statute, the provisions of this uniform law as adopted in each state are similar.

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