Grandparents Pressing Visitation Rights

The last time Helen and Fritz Ford saw their 6-year-old granddaughter, they took her on a picnic and to the zoo and visited her school.

Such an ordinary outing was three years, many court battles and more than $10,000 in the making. Before that September visit, they hadn’t seen her since Christmas 1989.

“She was perfectly at ease. It was almost like three years hadn’t gone by--all kinds of hugs and kisses,” recalls Helen Ford, who lives in Janesville, 55 miles southwest of Milwaukee.

“We just spent the day together. We didn’t talk about anything or anybody. It was just the three of us having fun,” she said. “I will never worry again that she’ll forget us.”

Less than two years after their son James died after heart surgery, the Fords became embroiled in a bitter court battle for the right to see their son’s only daughter. The girl’s mother forbade the visits after her new husband decided to adopt the girl. The couple contended visits by the grandparents would confuse the child.

“Even though my son died, my son was still her father, we were still grandparents,” Mrs. Ford said. “I don’t think that just because another spouse comes on the scene and adopts the child, the natural grandparents should be shoved aside.”

The Fords went to court, using Wisconsin’s family visitation law, which allows grandparents to go to court to seek visitation rights even when the children’s parents object.

Two state courts ruled that the grandparents’ would lose visitation rights if the girl was adopted by her stepfather, but the rulings were reversed last May by the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

The Fords’ fight ended in November when the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the law as constitutional. They can now spend a day with their granddaughter every three months, and after three visits will have a weekend with her every three months, Mrs. Ford said.

But the high court’s rejection of the appeal without comment did little to clarify the grandparents’ rights issue for lower courts and for grandparents around the country who are battling to see their children’s children, said Linda Balisle, the parents’ lawyer. She said her clients did not want to talk about the case.

“I’ve been on both sides of these cases,” Balisle said. “There’s no real consensus right now, and there are so many circumstances it’s hard to reach a real conclusion.”

The Supreme Court on Oct. 19 upheld a Kentucky law similar to Wisconsin’s.

“Right now, because families are changing the rules are changing, and while parents have always had a constitutional right to protect their children, the state legislatures are coming along and saying the grandparents have rights, too,” Balisle said.

Grandparents’ rights laws are likely to undergo changes as the breakup of families continues, said Luella Davison, who founded Grandparents Anonymous in Sylvan Lake, Mich., in 1977, when she was having difficulty seeing her grandchildren.

“There are more couples living together and there are always ex-husbands and ex-wives who won’t let their child see the grandparents,” Mrs. Davison said.

Mrs. Davison has answered 150 letters and about as many phone calls this year from grandparents who want desperately to see their grandchildren.

“They can give them some kind of heritage, some kind of link to the past, which a lot of kids don’t have any more,” Mrs. Davison said. “It’s important for kids who have that relationship with their grandparents to keep having it. It gives them a secure feeling.”

More than 50 groups supporting grandparents’ rights came together last July in Washington, D.C., to form the National Coalition of Grandparents.

Legal fees deter many grandparents from seeking visitation rights, said Mrs. Ford, whose fight cost her family more than $10,000.