Grandparents’ Rights Laws Can Cause Bitter Visitation Conflicts : Legislation: The measures usually apply to cases of death or divorce. When the family remains intact, there is a conflict with parental rights.

Five days after the General Assembly passed a bill strengthening the rights of grandparents to visit their grandchildren, Joni and David Gammie and their three children left the state.

The couple put their brick home in the Chicago suburb of La Grange on the market, left their jobs and did not tell their families where they were going. They wanted to keep Joni’s mother from ever seeing the children again.

That was in 1989, and this year lawmakers decided that the state law went too far. Last month, they passed a bill that repealed what they had done the year before. Gov. James R. Thompson has not decided whether to sign it. He has until late September.

All states have laws allowing grandparents to ask the courts for rights to visit grandchildren if a parent is divorced or dead. But the “grandparents’ rights” law enacted last year in Illinois allowed grandparents to sue for visitation rights even if the parents of the children are married or living together.

Lawyers said they know of only a few lawsuits filed under the 1989 law, but they have been bitter.

On one side, grandparents argue that family rifts should not keep them from their grandchildren. On the other side are parents who disapprove of how their parents treat the grandchildren and lawyers who argue that the law is an unconstitutional interference with parents’ rights to raise their children as they see fit.

The Illinois law was enacted after three years of attempts by state Rep. James Stange, who decided to sponsor legislation after hearing stories like that of Joni Gammie’s mother, Ruth Etheridge.

“Some of these families were intact, and then, all of a sudden, there was a fight or disagreement, and the families were pulled apart,” Stange said.

Outside Etheridge’s living room, a pine tree bears three yellow ribbons, symbols of her hope that she will someday see her grandchildren. The Gammies have since had a fourth child, a son, but Etheridge said she never was told of the April birth.

Etheridge and her daughter have accused each other of abusing the grandchildren. Each side says there is no evidence for the other’s allegations.

The last time Etheridge, an addictions counselor, saw her grandchildren was in January, 1987.

Her problems led her to found Grandchildren’s Rights to Grandparents, an organization that claims 200 members in Illinois.

Laws in 21 states, as of 1989, do not specifically limit visitation rights to cases of parental divorce or death, said Jeff Atkinson, a professor of family law at Loyola University in Chicago.

It is not clear how many of those laws would permit grandparents to sue successfully for visitation if the families are intact, because many state courts have not yet interpreted this area of law, Atkinson said.

In Tennessee, a judge has ordered a married couple to allow the paternal grandparents to see their grandchildren, based on a 1985 law. The parents moved with their children to Georgia, and the case is still in the courts.

Conflicts about grandparent visitation usually occur when parents are divorced and the non-custodial parent’s mother and father are not allowed to see their grandchildren, said Tennessee state Rep. Brenda Turner.

“I’m very much concerned when a child gets caught in the middle of a disagreement between parents and grandparents, and that’s what we’re talking about here,” she said.

Illinois state Sen. William Marovitz said he supports grandparents’ visitation rights, but he thinks Illinois went too far last year.

“Some people call this the grandparents’ rights law,” said Marovitz, who sponsored the repeal measure. “Others call it the in-laws’ interference law.”

Attorney Richard Goldstein, chairman of the Illinois State Bar Assn.’s legislation committee, said the 1989 law is unconstitutional because parental authority is protected by the 14th Amendment. He argued that government may not interfere unless there is a compelling interest, such as abuse or neglect.

“Our society is predicated on parental autonomy,” Goldstein said. “The parents are granted the authority to raise their children as they see fit.”

One mother who agrees is Karyn Brooks, who was sued for visitation rights by her mother, Dorothy Dillon.

Dillon, who lives in the Chicago suburb of Morton Grove, said she went to court in January, 1989, under the old grandparents’ visitation law after her daughter refused to let her see her 7-year-old grandson, Christopher, at Christmas.

Brooks said she had never barred her mother from seeing Christopher.

Brooks was divorced at the time, but she remarried her former husband and moved to Milwaukee.

“If grandparents had the best interests of the grandchildren in mind, they wouldn’t take their children to court,” Brooks said. “I just think this law is destroying the parents. I think we could have worked it out better ourselves.”