Category: Grandparent Rights

Big Grandparent Visitation Rights Update

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By The Law Offices of Ronald H. Kauffman of Ronald H. Kauffman, P.A. posted in Grandparent Rights on Monday, June 29, 2015.

Grandparents play an increasingly large role in raising grandchildren. Yet grandparent visitation rights don’t really exist in Florida. Will the new law passed this June change things? Starting July 1st we will find out.

Grandparent child custody and timesharing rights do not exist in Florida. But as American parents deal with both economic recession and family upheaval, grandparents have stepped in to help.

According to a recent survey, grandparents were the main caregivers for more than 3 million children in 2011 – a 20% increase from 2000, the Pew Research Center found.

I wrote an article in the Florida Bar Journal about grandparent visitation rights, and the attempts by Florida law makers to serve this big part of our population.

Two current statutory grounds for awarding grandparent visitation have been ruled unconstitutional by the Florida Supreme Court. Confusingly, these two provisions remain in the statute.

The laws were unconstitutional because compelling visitation with a grandparent based solely on the best interest of the child, without the showing harm to the child violates parents’ privacy.

Privacy is a fundamental right, and any statute that infringes on that right is subject to the “compelling state interest” test – the highest standard of review.

Florida is taking a new stab at having some form of grandparent visitation rights. House Bill 149 passed the House and Senate, and amends laws related to grandparent visitation.

The bill creates a new limited grandparent visitation statute:

(1) It allows a grandparent of a minor child whose parents are deceased, missing, or in a persistent vegetative state to petition the court for visitation.

(2) If there are two parents, one of whom is deceased, missing, or in a persistent vegetative state and the other has been convicted of a felony or certain violent crimes.

Grandparent must make a showing of parental unfitness or significant harm to the child, and also requires that grandparents try mediation and, if necessary, the court may appoint a guardian ad litem for the child.

Several factors are listed for the court to consider, including the previous relationship the grandparent had with the child, the findings of a guardian ad litem, the potential disruption to the family, the consistency of values between the grandparent and the parent, and the reasons visitation ended.

The bill limits the number of times a grandparent can file for visitation, absent a real, substantial and unanticipated change of circumstances.

The bill was approved by the Governor on June 11, 2015, and will become effective on July 1, 2015.

Terrorists & Grandparent Custody Rights

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By The Law Offices of Ronald H. Kauffman of Ronald H. Kauffman, P.A. posted in Grandparent Rights on Thursday, May 21, 2015.

Zachary Chesser threatened “South Park” creators for insulting Muhammad. Then he tried going to Somalia to join Al-Shabab. He brought his son to the airport to avoid suspicion. Does he, or the grandmother, have custody rights?

Zach’s plan didn’t work by the way. He was stopped at the airport. He was arrested and sentenced to 25 years in prison for attempting to support terrorists. He also pleaded guilty to threatening violence online.

Zach now lives in the supermax prison in Florence, Colorado. His wife, a Ugandan diplomat’s daughter named Proscovia Nzabanita, had to leave the United States after pleading guilty to lying about Zach’s plans.

This case raises grandparent custody rights because the fate of Zach’s 5-year old son Talhah is the center of a dispute being heard in a federal appellate court this week.

Zach is suing, Barbara Chesser, his own mother and a lawyer in the Office of the Attorney General, and her partner, and the FBI for money damages over how she learned of his plot to flee the U.S. with Talhah.

He alleges that FBI agents interfered with his parental rights by conspiring with his mother and her partner to ensure that Talhah could not travel to Jordan to live with his wife.

Talhah is being raised by his grandmother in the U.S. The grandmother filed for custody while her son Zach was behind bars waiting trial, and the mother, Nzabanita, was facing deportation. I’ve written about grandparent visitation before.

The Judge dismissed Zach’s lawsuit because there is no expectation of privacy for prison conversations, and no reason to object when the FBI disclosed the conversation to his grandmother. Zach appealed.

Virginia, where the custody case arose, allows grandparents to win custody over parents in certain circumstances. In contrast, grandparent rights to visit their grandchildren over the objections of fit parents do not exist in Florida.

But, Zach’s case is special given that a judge declared Zach and his wife unfit. If this case arose in Florida, there is a good chance that the grandmother could request some form of custodial rights.

Some facts about Zach may make any judge question his fitness. He allegedly converted to Islam after becoming infatuated with a girl. His father said Zach began wearing loin cloth in place of underwear. He threatened to kill South Park creators over a cartoon, involved his son in his attempt to join al Shabab – a group responsible for killing 148 students in Kenya.

On those facts, with no natural parents available to raise Talhah, even Florida would find some form of custodial rights available to the grandmother.

The Fox News report on the case is here.

Grandparent Visitation: New Health Study

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On behalf of Ronald H. Kauffman, P.A. posted in Grandparent Rights on Thursday, April 24, 2014.

Grandparent rights to visitation are in the news. A new study shows the effects of grandparent child custody on improving cognition. Is improving the health and well-being of a grandparent a valid concern in the grandparent visitation debate?

A recent study out of Australia found that the amount of time spent minding grandchildren predicted differences in cognitive performance. The study revealed:

The highest cognitive scores for most tests were seen in participants who minded grandchildren for 1 day a week. It was also a significant positive predictor of immediate recall performance

However, minding grandchildren for 5 days or more per week predicted lower performance.

The study suggest that spending 1 day a week minding grandchildren was optimal for cognition, but minding grandchildren for 5 days or more per week may have led to lower working memory performance and processing speed.

These results indicate that highly frequent grandparent visitation predicts lower cognitive performance.

My article, Bleeding Grandparent Visitation Rights is available for download at the Florida Bar’s website. The article examined the history of grandparent visitation rights in Florida, the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Troxel v. Granville, 530 U.S. 57 (2000) and the recently enacted Florida Statute §61.13002(2) in light of Florida and U.S. Supreme Court cases.

Grandparent rights of visitation in Florida has been a highly litigated and bitter fight. This new study sheds a little more light on the debate. Namely, should the health and cognitive impact on grandparent visitation be of concern to a court or the legislature?

An Abstract of the study can be found here.

Grandparent Visitation and Custody Increase

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On behalf of Ronald H. Kauffman, P.A. posted in Grandparent Rights on Monday, September 23, 2013.

Grandparent child custody and timesharing rights do not exist in Florida. But as American parents deal with the economic recession over the last few years, grandparents have stepped in to help. According to a recent survey, grandparents were the main caregivers for more than 3 million children in 2011 – a 20% increase from 2000, the Pew Research Center found.

As the Los Angeles Times reports:

“The parent gets laid off, or their home is foreclosed upon. They can’t afford the mortgage or rent,” said Susan Smith of the nonprofit Insight Center for Community Economic Development. Often “the quickest solution is, ‘Mom, Dad, can you help out?’ ” With the “jobless recovery,” Smith said, that help is still needed.

But money is just one of many problems that push grandparents into caregiving. Nearly half of parents who lived with their kids but left grandparents in charge were teens when their babies were born, Pew found. Other parents handed off children to grandparents when they went to serve in Iraq or Afghanistan, said Amy Goyer, home and family expert for AARP. Still others lost or relinquished their kids after tangling with drugs or alcoholism, suffering mental illness or landing in prison.

More than a fifth of grandparents who care for grandchildren live under the poverty line, Pew found – more than twice the overall poverty rate among Americans ages 50 and over. The financial challenges appear especially stark for grandparents raising grandchildren alone.

“You may have set aside a retirement for you and your husband – and now you have to spend your savings on feeding and clothing young children,” said Sylvie de Toledo, founder of the nonprofit Grandparents As Parents and author of a survival guide with the same name.

As I mentioned in my Florida Bar Journal article, Florida’s Legislature amended Chapter 751, and now authorizes courts to order concurrent custody to extended family members, such as grandparents, who have physical custody, but lack documentation necessary to consent to a child’s medical treatment, or to enroll a child in school.

However, the statute provides that concurrent custody may not diminish a parent’s custodial rights, and the court must terminate an order for concurrent custody if one of the parents objects.