Maintain Good Relations With the Parents of the Children
Video Transcribed: What should grandparents not do? I’m Tulsa Grandparents Rights Attorney, Justin Mosteller, and I’m going to spend a few minutes today talking with you about this topic. And it’s a big one. Admittedly, I can’t give you a full list of what you shouldn’t do in a case, or really even what you should do in a case, but I can give you some of the big ones.
Number one, and this is counterintuitive, I know, but you should do your best to maintain good relations with the parents of the children. Even if a parent is denying you visitation as a grandparent, try to keep it civil, but keep asking for visitation. That’s the main thing. But don’t make a bad situation worse by acting out.
Number two, and this is very important. When you have contact with the grandchild, you should never, ever bad mouth the parent that may be even denying you visitation. It’s very important. A parent’s relationship with the children is more important than the grandparents, even though the grandparents are very, very important.
But obviously, speaking ill of a parent to a child is not a good idea. It’s called alienation in most jurisdictions, and it can have severe consequences to your case. It could be fatal to your case. So, if you are in the habit of speaking ill of a parent, make sure that a child is not around to hear it. That is very important.
Another thing that grandparents should not do in cases like this has expectations that a grandparents’ rights order is going to put you on par with the parent in terms of visitation. A grandparent visitation case is not going to put you in the same position as a non-custodial parent or the parent that doesn’t have primary custody of a child.
You have rights as a grandparent once the visitation order is in place, but that visitation order is going to be limited compared to what a non-custodial parent would have in the same situation. So the rule of thumb that I tell a lot of my clients in grandparents’ rights cases is to expect more like one weekend a month and then holiday visitation that rotates.
I mean, obviously, this will be different in every case. The closer you live to the children, the better. So that’s one thing that you really should do is try to live as close as possible to those kids and try to get as much visitation with those kids as you can by agreement with the parents. It helps in a lot of different ways.
One, if you can avoid the necessity for grandparents’ rights order, you should because it is a time-consuming and frustrating process sometimes like all court cases. It’s the last resort, really. So, if you can be on good terms with the parent and can live close enough so that you can have regular contact with the children, that’s going to serve you well.
Even if it later becomes necessary for you to seek a grandparent visitation order, that strong continuous relationship is what the courts are looking for. You kind of have to eat some humble pie sometimes and maybe even agree to some outrageous conditions from the parent that’s denying the contact in order to get those visits. It’s so important to get those visits.
Hopefully, this has answered some of those questions and given you some advice about what not to do and a little bit of what to do. Every case is different. If you have any more questions, feel free to seek counsel from our office to speak with an Oklahoma Grandparents Rights Attorney, we’d be happy to help.