Grandparents: keeping contact with grandchildren in divorce
With festive periods approaching, families start to make plans on who will host the events and who will be invited, including thinking about extended family members. However, such plans can be very difficult when family members are separating or divorcing. Priority is not always dedicated to securing contact between their children and the other party’s extended family members.
Parents are often caught up in their own emotions, with little emotional space left to delicately address their children having contact with the other parent’s family. This can be a big loss for the children, if their once good relationships with their grandparents, aunts and uncles and extended cousins end when their parents’ relationship ends.
Extended family members and in particular grandparents can be a valuable support and source of information for your children to understand their background and heritage. In English law, there are no automatic grandparents’ rights to contact. So what should extended family members do? Firstly, try to keep a good relationship with the other parent. Aim to keep up channels of communication: offer to assist, try to avoid being seen to take sides. Perhaps you can start by seeing them when your own child sees them.
Mediation is one route to try to reach an agreement. It is a good idea for both the parent and the grandparent to prepare for a mediation meeting by having a session of legal advice. This will give clarity on what is a reasonable expectation in the months following a separation. For the parent, you need simple clear reasons why you might not welcome extended family contact, or what contact you do welcome, and an understanding of possible outcomes if matters are taken to court. This is because if mediation is unsuccessful then the only potential next step for a grandparent, aunt or uncle is to apply to Court for an Order.
The first step is to seek the Court’s permission to make an application for contact. The Court will consider what value the relationship between the child/ren with their grandparents or family member will bring. Will contact be harmful or impact negatively on the child, or on the rest of the family? Grandparents only rarely are refused permission to make a contact application. After permission is granted, the grandparents or the extended family member can proceed with an application for a Children Act order for contact.
If you are in a dispute about a child, or you feel it is possibly going to develop, you would benefit from some legal advice early on, to assist how you deal with the potential conflict, and to try to avoid such conflicts escalating.
If you have any questions or queries about this article or any of our other articles all of which are on our websitewww.hmbsolicitors.co.uk., please feel free to email us on [email protected]. If there are any particular issues that any readers would like to ask please feel free to email me.
Christina Theodorou
Specialist Family Lawyer and Mediator