My Story

    My battle with grandparent visitation laws began in 1996.  My own mother petitioned the court for grandparent visitation rights claiming she had been unreasonably denied visitation for a period of more than 90 days.  This is one of the statutory requirements in Missouri.  This is the requirement that allows intact families like mine to be sued.

     First, let me state that we never denied my mother visitation with our son, who was three at the time the lawsuit started.  In fact, we invited her to our house for Chrismas dinner not two weeks before receiving the letter from her lawyer.  We had decided to allow only supervised visits in our home for a number of reasons.

     Before the lawsuit started, our son spent one weekend alone with my mother.  Upon his return, his potty-training had regressed and his breathing condition (for which he needed surgery) had worsened.  We had asked my mother not to smoke around our son due to his breathing difficulties, but it was apparent to us that this request had been ignored.  In addition, she had not put our son in his car seat the entire weekend, including the two-hour trip to her home.  Not only had her bad judgement endangered our son's health, it had also endangered his life.

     We had other reasons for being reluctant in allowing unsupervised visits between our son and my mother.  My mother had always been a controlling woman with a violent temper.  I witnessed many of her physical attacks on other people throughout my life.  She had attempted suicide in front of me when I was six.  When I was eight, she burned herself intentionally using cigarettes, again in my presence.  There was also the time she tried to hit my brother with a steak knife and ended up slicing through her own hand instead, then ordered us to tell people that she had done it making a peanut butter sandwich.  Yet another time, she drove the car through the house and into the backyard while I was watching TV in the living room.  I wish these were isolated incidents but, unfortunately, they are only the tip of the iceburg. 

     At the time my son was born, my mother's violent temper had been under control for a number of years.  Although we believed she had gotten past her temper, we still felt it was in the best interests of our son to be cautious.  This and her lack of good judgement around our son forced us into a position of not allowing overnight visits or out-of-town trips with my mother.  We felt that, as his parents, our first responsibility was to protect our son.  Unfortunately, the court has not agreed. 

     We had a hearing in January 1997, in which the judge ordered supervised visitation in our home in Ohio.  In addition, if my mother were to exercise one visit in Ohio before July 1997, she would receive two unsupervised Missouri visits per year.  My mother appealed and lost.  She did come to our house in June 1997, but only stayed one hour.  During that hour, she verbally assaulted me, physically attacked my husband, and virtually ignored our son.  We were forced to call the police for intervention.  We also went to the DA to press charges. 

     After this incident, we did not hear from my mother for over two years.  Then, in October 1999, she filed a motion of contempt of court against us for denying her visitation.  We are now right back at where we started.  We have filed numerous motions in response to her motion and we are currently awaiting the ruling of the judge.    

     During this case, we have given three settlement offers, all of which she refused.  My father joined the lawsuit as an intervenor to protect his relationship with our son.  One of her lawyers misrepresented information to the judge, leading the judge to believe the case had been settled.  The judge then issued a judgement based on the false information - it was later invalidated.  We have been forced to drive 12 hours in the worst blizzard in three years to go to a hearing and not get to say a word.  We were sent to mediation where the mediator was pro-grandparent and took great joy in berating me as if I were a small child who was behaving very badly.  We have accumulated nearly $10,000 in legal bills, and our case is not nearly over.

     Missouri's Supreme Court has upheld the grandparent visitation law as constitutional because it allows for only "minimal intrusion" into the family unit.  How can ANY court case be considered minimal intrusion when parents' must take time off work and unpaid leave to attend mediations, lawyer's meetings, and hearings?  Overruling the parents' decisions concerning the safety of their child is NOT minimal intrusion.  Putting parents in jail for protecting their children is NOT minimal intrusion.

Many grandparents are good, kind, and loving.  My father and step-mother are two such grandparents.  There are some grandparents who lose their relationships with their grandchildren due to the bitterness that ensues when a family is breaking apare.  Grandparent visitation laws need to be written to protect established, healthy relationships between grandparents and grandchildren.  They should not be put in place to establish new relationships or to protect harmful ones.  I urge you to write to Missouri legislators demanding the grandparent visitation law be revised so that it supports and protects the family unit rather than undermining it.