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Taking Family Feuds to Court
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DO parents have the right to keep grandparents out of their children’s lives? DO parents have the right to keep grandparents out of their children’s lives? That is the question being debated in the Illinois Legislature as the issue of grandparents’ visitation rights advances into uncharted territory. Over the last 15 years grandparents’ visitation rights have been debated in state legislatures across the country. Today nearly all states have laws allowing grandparents to petition courts to continue seeing their grandchildren in the event of divorce or the death of a child’s parent. Illinois has gone much further. As a result of a groundbreaking law passed last September, the state allows grandparents to seek visitation even when the parents are married. But now many Illinois lawmakers say they went too far, and that grandparents should not have legal entree to the lives of intact families. Last week the State Senate passed and sent to the House of Representatives a bill that would essentially repeal the law enacted last fall. The debate in Illinois has brought new attention to the issue of grandparents’ rights, at the same time raising some difficult questions about contemporary family life: * Where do the rights of parents end and those of grandparents begin? * What are the best interests of a child when parents and grandparents fight over visitation rights? * What is the proper role of legislation in the affairs of intact famililies? The Illinois law enacted last fall was hotly contested. It was supported by grandparents’ groups and opposed by the Illinois State Bar Association. The bill grew out of a 1985 court case, which was dismissed, in which a married couple was sued by the parents of one partner who wanted to see more of their grandchildren. A great many state senators in Illinois changed their minds about the extent of grandparents’ rights because of court cases that have been filed as a result of the new law, said Senator William A. Marovitz, a Democrat from Chicago who introduced the revised legislation. More : query.nytimes.com |
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