Getting Old Is Not For The Weak

A 6-year-old was asked where his grandma lived. "Oh," he said, "she lives at the airport, and when we want her, we just go get her. Then, when we're done having her visit, we take her back to the airport."

In today’s family relationships, this can be more truth than fiction. A lot of our children took our invitation to attend college out-of-town or out-of-state, then stayed there. Now, if we want to see them or our grandchildren, we have to go where they are. We are told that the little ones need to stay in their own familiar surroundings so they will feel comfortable. Then we come to find out that they are in activities that keep them near home. After that, their social lives start to impinge on their ability to visit their grandparents. And finally, they go away to college, marry and move further away to pursue their own careers.

If you followed the news over the holidays, you probably heard about the case of the young boy whose mother took him to Brazil several years ago to visit her family, then stayed there, divorced her American husband, remarried a member of a powerful Brazilian family, got pregnant and died in childbirth. During all of that, the boy’s American father was denied access to his son and the Brazilian family fought all the way to the Supreme Court to keep him, despite the fact that the law was clear that the boy should be returned to his natural father. Many years and hundreds of thousands of dollars were wasted because people with egos bigger than their brains refused to resolve the matter in accordance with the law.

Our own extended family likes to joke that we keep the “fun” in dysfunctional. We try through some holiday and special anniversary and birthday celebrations to keep ourselves connected. When my wife had one of those birthdays that ends in a BIG ZERO, we all met at the beach for a few days of celebrating. But those activities are few and far between, to say nothing of expensive.

One of these days we will be grandparents. When that day arrives, we intend to participate in our grandchild’s life to the extent that we can. Some of that involvement will be based upon our own free time, as I will be working for many years to come. Some will depend on our daughter’s career and other influences that I laid out above. But what about the growing number of grandparents who are shut out of their grandchildren’s lives, either because of the distance that their children have moved, or because of the separation or divorce of their children, or because of some real or perceived slight that occurred between the parent and the child or the in-law?

There are tales of daughters-in-law who exercise power over their husbands by denying the husband’s parents any access to the grandkids, sometimes even returning birthday or Christmas cards and gifts. This can happen to the point where parents end up suing their own adult children over the right to visit with the grandchildren. In this type of case, the grandparents have to claim that they have a right to visit, but that right is not guaranteed in every state. And the jurisdiction for such a case is always the state where the child resides, so check with your attorney or consult the website of AARP, www.aarp.org, and search “grandparents visitation rights.”

The key question for the court in every one of these cases is “What is in the best interest of the child?” And every one of these cases is fact-specific, meaning that there are no hard and fast rules on which you can rely. So if your family is involved in a situation like this, there are a couple of places that you should turn. Obviously, since there are legal rights at work, you will need to consult with an experienced domestic relations attorney. For that information, you can contact the Allegheny County Bar Association and ask for the Lawyer Referral Service. The lawyer will sit down with you and explain your rights, as well as the rights of the child.

The other course of action that you can seek out is mediation. In order to avoid the time, pressure and great expense that litigation involves, try to put the matter on the table in front of a professional mediator. He or she can assist the parties in getting a plan worked out without having to get into all of the procedural and legal avenues that a court battle would include. It is a much more peaceful and diplomatic method for accomplishing what everyone wants, and it leaves the door open to a family reconciliation later on.

Christopher M. Abernethy has been practicing law in Hampton Township since 1976. He focuses on elder law, which includes wills, trusts, powers of attorney, living wills and probate matters. He also is proficient in all aspects of real estate law and business law. He is a member of the National Association of Elder Law Attorneys and the AARP Legal Services Network. He can be reached at 412-486-6624 or by email at cabernethy@aaylaw.com.