Fractured Families at Core of Visitation Issue

The worst moment for Lynn Airrington may have come when a judge appointed a Santa Monica lawyer as the legal advocate for her 6-year-old daughter, Heather.

For two years, she had been fighting a lawsuit brought by her ex-husband’s parents, who wanted to take Heather for one weekend a month.

The lawyer, known as a “minor’s counsel,” said that her fee was $5,000, half of which must be paid by the struggling single mother.

“I’m her mother. A fit parent. Why can’t I speak for my daughter?” asks Airrington, who lives in Hacienda Heights.

It is one of many questions that has left the 33-year-old mother angry and resentful after a nearly five-year court battle, one that she ultimately won but at a cost of more than $130,000.

“Why should any parent be put through this?” she asks.

Airrington and several other mothers in Southern California have become unwilling experts on a little-known aspect of California’s family laws. In 1983, the Legislature gave judges the power to “grant reasonable visitation rights” to grandparents if they think it is “in the best interest of the child.”

The issue of court-ordered grandparent visitation is now before the U.S. Supreme Court, which is expected to rule by late June on a case from the Seattle area.

If the justices uphold Washington state’s law, it could give new encouragement to grandparents in warring families to demand regular visits alone with their grandchildren. But if the high court finds the law unconstitutional, its ruling could strike down California’s law as well.

The laws’ words and purpose carry a warm glow, like the memories of a visit to grandma’s house. Their advocates say that all children need more adults who love them. And who could be more unselfishly loving than a grandparent?

But Airrington’s case and others illustrate just how ugly these disputes can get.

More than 60 million Americans claim the title of grandparent, and roughly 1 in 9 is a caregiver for at least one grandchild. Just as there are both happy marriages and painful divorces, however, family relationships across generations can be warm and supportive or spiteful and hostile.

In most grandparents’ rights cases, a parent and grandparents have had strained relations for some time. For grandparents who feel that a parent is blocking access to their grandchildren, grandparents’ rights laws, in effect in all 50 states, essentially empower them to bypass the parent and pursue a relationship with their grandchildren. With lawsuits and court battles, however, bad feelings can degenerate into bitter family feuds.

Parents have been first surprised and then outraged to learn that they could be sued, hauled into court, forced to testify under oath and ordered to undergo psychological testing and counseling simply because they did not want to put their young children in a grandparent’s care.

“I think there is never a winner in these cases,” says Joan C. Bohl, a law professor at Southwestern University who has been writing about these laws for a decade. “The cost of the process--financial and personal, the trauma to the child--always outweighs the benefits.”

She also believes that the laws are unconstitutional, an unwarranted invasion of parents’ rights.

“These are not situations where the child is abused or neglected. It’s the state--a stranger in a black robe--stepping in to decide how the child should spend her weekends,” she says.

Another sued parent, Jana Shepard of Los Angeles, says that her deceased ex-husband’s mother is fond of drinking and partying. “I do not approve of her lifestyle and I don’t want my son Alex around that,” she says.

Yet after a brief hearing, a judge in the San Fernando Valley rejected Shepard’s concern and ordered her 4-year-old child to go off with his grandmother for a series of get-acquainted visits.

“This woman is a stranger to my son. How can she have a right to go into court and say, ‘I want that child for a weekend’?” asks Shepard, 30.

Cases Take Financial, Emotional Toll

Marcia Harrigan, 35, a divorced mother with two daughters, says that they moved from San Diego to the Los Angeles area two years ago because of a job transfer. But her parents, with whom she says she has long had a troubled relationship, sued and won pretrial visitation rights in San Diego.

Unable to afford an attorney, Harrigan and her girls were forced to return to San Diego regularly for court appearances and meetings with psychologists and counselors.

“It was as much as three times a week. This is a control issue with my mother,” Harrigan says. “They make me out be a terrible mother. I get three or four letters a week from the lawyer saying: ‘Do this or do that.’ I can’t get them out of my life.”

The issue in the case before the Supreme Court sounds simple enough: Who decides what is best for a young child, a parent or a judge?

Through most of American history, it was understood that parents had ultimate control over their children. However, if the child were abused or the parents unfit and neglectful, the government could intervene under state child welfare laws.

During the 1970s and 1980s, the states went further and adopted new “grandparent rights” laws sponsored by the American Assn. of Retired Persons, now known simply as AARP. Under these broad measures, parents could be sued and ordered to turn over their children for weekends at a time or entire weeks during the summer.

At the start, sponsors said that these laws would be used by grandparents who cared for children as substitute parents. Such a bond between child and grandparent should not be broken, they said. Even parent-rights advocates agree that grandparents who act as caregivers deserve special status under the law.

But most lawsuits are brought by grandparents who, because of a death, divorce, separation or ill will, no longer see their grandchildren. In California and most states, a husband and wife who remain together usually can veto a legal claim for grandparents’ visitation.

Single parents, however, cannot simply refuse a visitation request, according to the law. They are particularly vulnerable if they cannot afford a lawyer to contest lawsuits. And many judges believe that it is usually in a child’s best interest to spend time with his or her grandparents, regardless of the parent’s view.

Rift Between Parties Results in Lawsuit

In Lynn Airrington’s case, she separated from her first husband, Daniel, after he was arrested repeatedly on drug charges. She placed some of the blame for her husband’s troubles on his mother, Shirley Miles, and the women had several loud confrontations after her divorce in 1994.

“She [Lynn] told us, ‘I intend to get on with my life and I suggest you do the same,’ ” says Miles, 54, of Whittier. She is divorced from Dave Miles, 54, a carpenter from Rowland Heights, but the two remain friendly and they wanted to be part of their granddaughter’s life.

They cherish their photos of Heather but were rebuffed when they tried to see her. “When she had a birthday, we weren’t invited,” Dave said. Their calls were not returned, they said, and when they sent cards for holidays and birthdays, they came back unopened.

Frustrated, they sued.

“I feel we do have a right to see her. We are her grandparents,” says Shirley Miles.

The case turned into a marathon, first before a judge in Norwalk and then before Superior Court Judge Marlene Kristovich in Los Angeles. Both sides accused the other of lying about various details. In 1997, Airrington says, she and the grandparents were in court 31 days, usually for brief hearings on the status of the case.

All of them--the grandparents, the mother and the daughter--went through court-ordered evaluations by psychologists and family counselors. The judge then appointed Frieda Gordon, the Santa Monica lawyer, to represent Heather.

“There was such hostility and anger in this case,” says Gordon, who believes strongly in the value of grandparents’ visitations.

“If the child is being denied a chance to know a side of her family, why can’t the government intercede?” she asks.

For her part, Heather, now 9, told her new lawyer and the psychologist that she did not wish to see her grandparents. “They are mean,” she says.

The child’s responses were dismissed by the judge, however, because they were seen as simply reflecting her mother’s opinion.

Airrington clashed repeatedly with Gordon over legal bills.

“I was the sole support for my daughter and I was nearly bankrupt paying my own attorney,” says Airrington, who works as an insurance claims adjuster.

But under state law and the judge’s order, the mother was obliged to pay her share of Gordon’s fee.

“I had to garnish her wages to get paid,” Gordon says.

In March 1998 the judge issued a three-page opinion giving her conclusions. Because Heather recognized a photo of the grandparents, the judge said, “this recognition indicates a bond” with them.

True, “the child made derogatory remarks about the grandparents,” but this shows “the child is suffering psychological damage due to confusion over the visitation,” she added. Therefore, “the court orders grandparents visitations . . . [weekly] to occur in a therapeutic setting” with psychologists.

Refusing still, Airrington appealed to a three-judge state court. In the meantime, she had remarried and her new husband, Mike, adopted Heather.

Last May, the case went before the state Court of Appeal. Four days after hearing arguments, it issued a brief ruling reversing the Los Angeles judge’s order and dismissing the grandparents’ claim. The appellate judges avoided the broader issue raised by the case and said simply that, since Airrington is now married, she and her husband are free to veto the visitation order.

The Mileses, disappointed and exhausted, decided to give up, having spent about $80,000.

Their lawyer, David Ridenour of Whittier, also sounds exhausted by the ordeal.

“This was my first of these [grandparent visitation] cases, and I hope my last. I have boxes of files all over the office,” he says.

Jeffrey W. Doeringer, a Costa Mesa lawyer who handled the Airrington appeal, says that he was pleased to win for his client. But he notes that broader challenges to the California law have been brushed aside by state courts. Not a single state appellate court has directly addressed the law, he says.

“This is a hidden issue that needs to be recognized. The Legislature and judges need to wake up and realize there are a lot of horror stories out there,” he says. “The child’s college fund is eaten up by these lawsuits.”

Airrington says that she owes lawyers more than $100,000. She started a Web site, https://www.parentsrights.org, where mothers can exchange information on their cases and the law.

In February, Marcia Harrigan’s case went to trial in San Diego. This time, she was represented by Doeringer and a local lawyer. The judge halted the weekly visits and the counseling sessions, ordering instead four long-weekend visits a year in San Diego between Harrigan’s parents and her daughters.

“It’s not over yet,” she says. “But we are now able to lead our lives with minimal court interference.”

Jana Shepard also remarried and succeeded in blocking the visitation order in April. A psychologist who interviewed her son and his grandmother found there was no bond between the two. The grandmother, who lives in Northern California and asked not be identified, said in an interview she had agreed to drop the case.

Her son does not lack for grandparents, however.

“He has five other sets of grandparents,” she said, in her family, her new husband’s family and other men related to her late ex-husband.

“They’ve been part of Alex’s life and we’re happy when they come to visit.”